How Section 8 Housing Can Actually Help Poor People Escape Poverty

How Section 8 Housing Can Actually Help Poor People Escape Poverty
NEW YORK, NY - MAY 19: Residents stand outside of an East Harlem public housing complex on May 19, 2015 in New York City. New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio announced his 10-year approach to fixing New York City's ailing public housing authority in an appearance Tuesday at the at Johnson Houses Community Center in Harlem. The plan will call for exploring the development of underused housing sites with mixed-income development. In the plan, half of any new residential units would be for low-income families. The New York City Housing Authority has an annual budget of about $3 billion and provides housing for more than 400,000 residents. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
NEW YORK, NY - MAY 19: Residents stand outside of an East Harlem public housing complex on May 19, 2015 in New York City. New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio announced his 10-year approach to fixing New York City's ailing public housing authority in an appearance Tuesday at the at Johnson Houses Community Center in Harlem. The plan will call for exploring the development of underused housing sites with mixed-income development. In the plan, half of any new residential units would be for low-income families. The New York City Housing Authority has an annual budget of about $3 billion and provides housing for more than 400,000 residents. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

When a woman in McKinney, Texas, told Tatiana Rhodes and her friends to “go back to your Section 8 homes” at a public pool earlier this month, she inadvertently spoke volumes about the failure of a program that was designed to help America’s poor.

Created by Congress in 1974, the “Section 8” Housing Choice Voucher Program was supposed to help families move out of broken urban neighborhoods to places where they could live without the constant threat of violence and their kids could attend good schools.

But somewhere along the way, “Section 8” became a colloquialism for housing that is, to many, indistinguishable from the public-housing properties the program was designed to help families escape.

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