Reply #54: Another important point [View All]

[Orwellian_Ghost]

While it is true that some cuts in Federal housing programs had occurred under President Carter, it was not until the onset of the Reagan administration that the legitimate role of the Federal government in providing affordable housing for low-income people was challenged and effectively gutted.

Between 1981 and 1986 the federal budget for housing programs was cut from $31 billion to $10 billion per year. During the same period federal tax expenditures in the form of homeowner mortgage interest tax deductions increased from $8.2 billion to $28.6 billion. Only 3% of these tax breaks went to lower income households.

These changes in housing policy have not been reversed through either the Bush-Clinton-Bush Administrations. And whereas in the 50ºs, 60ºs, and 70ºs, a wealth of federal programs generated the development of millions of units of new and rehabilitated low-income housing, todayºs federal housing budget contains nothing for housing production and is limited to rental vouchers, one-year renewals on the thousands of HUD Section 8 projects whose twenty to thirty year terms are expiring and the HOPE 6 program for the redevelopment of public housing, which often results in a net loss of subsidized low-income units.

These cuts led to a dramatic increase in homelessness which exacerbate all the issues related to personal security and well-being. Quite expectedly more people on the street with no hopes and no social safety net leads to all sorts of criminal activity which is really only the symptoms of the States original sin of shoving people out in the cold with nowhere to go. Once this cycle begins it is very difficult to halt. And the State is there to prey upon the victims they created.

During the Reagan Administration's budget-cutting drive in the 1980's, the federal government also slashed funding for such programs as group homes and outreach for the homeless mentally ill. Many of these folks have now become insitutionalized in the US penal colony.