Nation: I knew this sounded familiar.
NYTIMES did a piece on the trouble of section 8 renters moving out to Antioch back in August of 2008 even quoting Karen Coleman about her troubles.
I did look at the times piece as
lamer PC version of the Memphis Section 8 study in the Atlantic which showed the logical conclusion if you take people out of poor crime ridden areas the trouble is likely to follow.
The AP story just goes over the same ground but with some amazing liberal quotes at the end.
As more and more black renters began moving into this mostly white San Francisco Bay Area suburb a few years ago, neighbors started complaining about loud parties, mean pit bulls, blaring car radios, prostitution, drug dealing and muggings of schoolchildren.
In 2006, as the influx reached its peak, the police department formed a special crime-fighting unit to deal with the complaints, and authorities began cracking down on tenants in federally subsidized housing.
Now that police unit is the focus of lawsuits by black families who allege the city of 100,000 is orchestrating a campaign to drive them out.
"A lot of people are moving out here looking for a better place to live," said Karen Coleman, a mother of three who came here five years ago from a blighted neighborhood in nearby Pittsburg. "We are trying to raise our kids like everyone else. But they don't want us here."
City officials deny the allegations in the lawsuits, which were filed last spring and seek unspecified damages.
Across the country, similar tensions have simmered when federally subsidized renters escaped run-down housing projects and violent neighborhoods by moving to nicer communities in suburban Washington, Chicago and Los Angeles.
But the friction in Antioch is "hotter than elsewhere," said U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development spokesman Larry Bush.
.....Joseph Villarreal, the housing authority chief, said the problems in Antioch mirror tensions seen nationally when poor renters move into neighborhoods they can afford only with government help.
"One of the goals of the programs is to de-concentrate poverty," Villarreal said. "There are just some people who don't want to spend public money that way."
Tensions like those afflicting Antioch have drawn scholars and law enforcement officials to debate whether crime follows subsidized renters out of the tenements to the suburbs.
Susan Popkin, a researcher at the nonprofit Urban Institute, said she does not believe that is the case. But the tensions, she said, are real.
"That can be a recipe for anxiety," she said. "It can really change the demographics of a neighborhood." |
You cannot "de-concentrate" poverty or instill character and acting the good citizen by handing out a rental voucher to people in these areas. You can take the person out the area but the area is still in the person. Of course what passes for acceptable or normal behavior would be transported out to these suburbs which is going to upset people who have no desire to deal with the problem which seem to be getting worse.
They are even
bringing Section 8'ers to Century Village which is making people upset because the do-gooders in power want to help people. This isn't help, this is a feel good program that spreads out poverty and crime to other areas with the assitance of taxpayer funded money.
Now it is
really easy to mock the
liberals when their program of love backfires. In this case however I would join the protests, if I knew in my area that a influx of Section 8'ers were coming my way I would sell at a loss and get the hell out of Dodge.
It is not about color, it is about character and when the 8'ers move in and you see crime shoot up with the area changing around you, its not racist to point out the probable major cause of the situation.