Poverty in America
The documentary I watched was Poverty, Politics and Profit which follows the stories of families hurt by poverty and a government that says they are helping but cannot seem to prove how. The documentary starts by following the section 8 vouchers. The section 8 vouchers are supposed to pay the difference between what a renter can actually pay and the price of rent itself. Unfortunately, for most of these renters who are eligible for section 8 on 1 out of every 4 households actually get it. You are able to see people running to the section 8 offices at full sprint in a desperate attempt to get one of the applications and hopefully be able to put a roof over their family’s heads. The vouchers are only good for 90 days which means these people need to try their hardest to find a place that will not only take them in but a place that also accepts the section 8 vouchers before they have to start the process all over again. Something really sad that comes up is the reaction of the community when they learn about low income housing moving to their neighborhood. Construction on a section 8 housing area was put to a stop because the city called a meeting and local residents complained that the new housing will create traffic, over crowding in schools, and some did not like the idea of having low income housing residents near them at all. These residents were completely ignoring the fact that these people may not have anywhere else to go. You also get to see how primarily low income housing residents are mainly African American and that seems to be the biggest issue with the community, they call the police on them and verbally assault them just for living in this area.
Next comes The Low-Income Housing Tax Credit which was a new way to allow public housing to be built, but it also introduced a new set of problems. The way this tax credit works is, the IRS gives a significant amount of tax credit to state government for state housing and then the local government splits these credits up to developers where then the developers will sell these credits to banks for cash and loans which thy then use to build the apartments. Since the tax payers are paying for most of it this means they are able to charge lower rent prices. The problem again arises where they still need to find locations for these apartments and there is always pushback from the local residents because they all assume that all people in low income housing are criminals and that they will destroy their town and their way of life. This eventually leads to the reason why low income housing developments are almost all located in unsafe areas. The people who were once opposed to the idea are now in full support because these apartments are no longer in their backyards. This is now causing lawsuits to form saying that the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit supports racial segregation, making it always seem like a lose-lose situation. Finally, when they were able to reach an agreement with the public and private sectors, everyone seemed happy but the amount of money being paid by the taxpayers did not line up with the amount of housing being produced.
With the amount of money being paid by the taxpayers and the amount of housing being created something just was not adding up. Over the last twenty years the amount of housing units has fallen from seventy thousand to fifty thousand while the taxpayers are paying more than 60% and that is after inflation. After making this discovery they reached out to people involved with the low-income housing tax credit, but no one would agree to any kind of interview. Millions of dollars were stolen from these projects by creating fake bank accounts and fake construction businesses. The developers of these low incoming housing units were stealing money from their own projects in order to build themselves bigger and nicer houses. To make matters even worse the leaders of these organizations were using the money they stole to build private villas in foreign countries and hiking up the rent to again fill their own pockets.
Poverty in America is a very serious issues and it is sad to see just how far people will go to avoid the issue. Everywhere from local residents voting to veto any chance for affordable housing in their neighborhood all the way to the developers who are responsible for creating low income housing apartments stealing money from these projects. Everyone deserves to have a home and a place they can be safe and if things keep going the way they are that will never become a reality.
-Anonymous
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/poverty-politics-and-profit/
December 9, 2020 @ 8:34 pm
I feel as thought the poor are always taken advantage of and if you are a part of the lower class, you get treated differently from mainly the higher class, as well as everyone else. Police tend to see the poor differently and it’s proven because people have opinions on how others dress and if you dress raggedy supposedly, you get the label that you are poor. People just don’t get how far they go when things come out of there mouth and how badly some people are treated. This needs to be igknowledged by soemone and soemone needs to handle this.