Results 1 to 2 of 2

Thread Information

Users Browsing this Thread

There are currently 1 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 1 guests)

  1. #1
    Senior Member
    Join Date
    May 2007
    Location
    Mexifornia
    Posts
    2,174

    CA: Section 8 Housing Moves Poor to Suburbs; Tensions Follow

    This looks like a beautiful community...what a nightmare!

    As Program Moves Poor to Suburbs, Tensions Follow

    Recipients of federal housing vouchers, many of them African-American, who in recent years have moved to Antioch, Calif., accuse the city’s police officers of harassment in a lawsuit filed last month.

    By SOLOMON MOORE
    Published: August 8, 2008

    ANTIOCH, Calif. — From the tough streets of Oakland, where so many of Alice Payne’s relatives and friends had been shot to death, the newspaper advertisement for a federally assisted rental property in this Northern California suburb was like a bridge across the River Jordan.

    Alice Payne had to leave her Antioch home, where federal vouchers subsidized the rent.
    Ms. Payne, a 42-year-old African-American mother of five, moved to Antioch in 2006. With the local real estate market slowing and a housing voucher covering two-thirds of the rent, she found she could afford a large, new home, with a pool, for $2,200 a month.

    But old problems persisted. When her estranged husband was arrested, the local housing authority tried to cut off her subsidy, citing disturbances at her house. Then the police threatened to prosecute her landlord for any criminal activity or public nuisances caused by the family. The landlord forced the Paynes to leave when their lease was up.

    Under the Section 8 federal housing voucher program, thousands of poor, urban and often African-American residents have left hardscrabble neighborhoods in the nation’s largest cities and resettled in the suburbs.

    Law enforcement experts and housing researchers argue that rising crime rates follow Section 8 recipients to their new homes, while other experts discount any direct link. But there is little doubt that cultural shock waves have followed the migration. Social and racial tensions between newcomers and their neighbors have increased, forcing suburban communities like Antioch to re-evaluate their civic identities along with their methods of dealing with the new residents.


    The foreclosure crisis gnawing away at overbuilt suburbs has accelerated that migration, and the problems. Antioch is one of many suburbs in the midst of a full-blown mortgage meltdown that has seen property owners seeking out low-income renters to fill vacant homes. The most recent Contra Costa County records available show that from 2003 to 2005, the number of Section 8 households in Antioch grew by 50 percent, to about 1,500 from 1,000. Many new residents are African-American; Antioch’s black population has grown to about 20 percent, from 3 percent in 1990.

    Federally assisted tenants in Antioch brought a class action lawsuit against the police department last month, claiming racial discrimination, intimidation and illegal property searches. The lawsuit, which was filed in the Northern District of California, claims that the police routinely questioned Section 8 residents about their housing status and wrote letters to the county’s housing authority recommending termination of subsidies. They say the police also threatened Section 8 landlords for infractions by tenants. A December 2007 study of Antioch police records by Public Advocates, a law firm in San Francisco, counted 67 investigations of black households, compared with 59 of white families; black households, it found, are four times as likely to be searched based on noncriminal complaints and to be contacted by the police in the first place.

    Chief James Hyde of the Antioch Police Department denied that his officers routinely asked whether tenants were Section 8 recipients and said that the police department did not have information about which homes were on federal assistance. But Chief Hyde also said that the local housing authority was not meeting its obligation to screen tenants properly, and that as his department focused on nuisance issues, the police had become a de facto enforcement arm of the federal government.

    “Other cities have come asking us for guidance,â€

  2. #2
    Senior Member SOSADFORUS's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jan 2007
    Location
    IDAHO
    Posts
    19,570
    $2,200 a month is what they call Low income housing...we again are getting screwed

    Alice Payne had to leave her Antioch home, where federal vouchers subsidized the rent.
    Ms. Payne, a 42-year-old African-American mother of five, moved to Antioch in 2006. With the local real estate market slowing and a housing voucher covering two-thirds of the rent, she found she could afford a large, new home, with a pool, for $2,200 a month.
    This is the same thing that is happening with illegal immigration...every where they move crime rises, the town goes to hell along with the schools and everything else....they are bringing their 3rd world country with them to destroy our towns and our way of life.\



    <<<" ACTION ALERT 8/12" for>>>
    "Californa and Texas"

    We need to contact "Governors Arnie and Ricky"
    Instructions and contact information

    http://www.alipac.us/ftopict-127637.html
    ALSO... Don't forget contributions is what keeps us active at alipac!
    http://www.alipac.us/modules.php?name=C ... page&pid=9
    Please support ALIPAC's fight to save American Jobs & Lives from illegal immigration by joining our free Activists E-Mail Alerts (CLICK HERE)

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •