Is the Section 8 Housing Program a Successful Policy?

The Section 8 Housing program emerged in its modern form in 1974 and it had two main functions. Firstly, it sought to give money to private developers to build affordable housing developments, and secondly, it sought it give vouchers to low income residents to go and obtain housing in the private housing market (Olsen 2003). Specifically, tenants who receive Section 8 housing vouchers typically contribute 30% of their income to housing costs with the government vouchers covering the rest of the cost. (Sampson 4). The fact that rents are guaranteed to the private building owners by the government is supposed to be an incentive for developers to build affordable housing. In reality, many barriers still exist in the US to achieving the goal of adequate housing for all, including racism, insufficient resources dedicated to public housing, and a problematic framework of public housing as a vehicle for economic development and job growth rather than a vehicle to house those in need.

The Section 8 program sounds like a good idea in practice, giving housing vouchers to those who cannot afford housing should work in theory. In practice however, this program falls far short of meeting the needs of those who lack adequate housing and it does so for a number of reasons. However, the one strength of the program that I will note is the goal of economically integrated public housing that was introduced under Clinton in the 1990’s, Section 8 has worked in isolated cases where low income families have the opportunity to live in middle class communities. The sad fact is that the US population does not think housing (or health care, equal education, etc.) is a right of all of its citizens but rather a privilege to be earned through hard work and savvy saving practices. The result of this Darwinist outlook on housing, 2017 saw the first rise in homelessness numbers since 2007, despite the fact that joblessness is statistically low (Sharkov, 2017).

Therefore I must conclude that the weakness of the Section 8 housing program lies in its implementation and funding. Because of the anti-welfare state views that have been held by most of the American public since the Cold War started in the mid-twenty first century, the Section 8 housing program has not received adequate funding to seriously tackle the affordable housing crisis in the US. If the number of vouchers, the amount of vouchers, and the number of affordable housing developments were increased, then this program might reach its potential of solving this crisis. The obvious flaw in this program is also the emphasis on providing the opportunity to access affordable housing to those who need it, rather than providing the actual access to the physical housing.

While the Section 8 program could work well in theory, it is being carried out in an anti-socialist environment in the US and as a result it has been poorly implemented and poorly funded. And then we arrive at the final problem that makes the Section 8 program a weak one, it is vulnerable to the racist impulses to whites who do not minorities living in their area. In Chicago for example, a Section 8 housing development was proposed in Jefferson Park, a largely white neighborhood with many white police and fire department employees in it, and was met with virulent racist protests (Dukmasova, 2017). Regardless of where a person lives in the US today, if they struggle to afford housing, their life is only going to get significantly more difficult because under Ben Carson’s short tenure at HUD, the department has already cut rental assistance spending by $974 million, instead of increasing resources to rental assistance, which is desperately needed. Because Section 8 falls short, the program has more weakness than strength (Woellert, 2017).

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