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Comment by davesque | Hacker News Reader

I'm sure people have suggested this, but what's the thinking about giving people housing stipends instead of making them live in a specific building which is annexed for a housing project? Seems like this could address some of the shortcomings of housing projects such as racial segregation and concentration of crime.

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We effectively already offer this in the US -- it's Section 8 "Housing Choice Voucher", as the article mentions.

http://portal.hud.gov/hudportal/HUD?src=/topics/housing_choi...

You will find that places accepting Section 8 vouchers are highly concentrated, poorly connected to transit, and highly segregated. Local property owners often vigorously fight zoning that allows any new, better connected, or mixed income development that accepts section 8 payments. So in effect you get privately managed projects. Its pretty tragic really.

Is there a good reason this aid is given as a voucher versus giving out money against proof of a rental contract (e.g. how it works in Finland)? Simplified bureaucracy? This would solve at least some of the discrimination problems since there wouldn't be a class of people recognizable by them holding a special form of money.

What specifically does "against proof of a rental contract" mean? Rental contracts, at least apartment ones here in the states, often require some up front cash. Is this not the case in Finland? If it is the case, is the government provided money given to the render before or after the contract? If given before, how do they prevent people from just stealing it? If given after, how do people without money provide the up-front cash?

These and similar questions are some common reasons behind using vouchers/stamps instead of cash.

Yeah, this is one of many reasons I'm in favor of direct cash grants rather than vouchers and dispensation of services that could be purchased more cheaply on an open market. Don't get me wrong, I'm not free market zealot, but the current housing voucher program is one of the least efficient means of housing individuals I can imagine.

A much, much bigger problem in the US is that houses have trended larger, fancier, with more amenities, etc. New houses have more than doubled in size since the 1950s, while holding fewer occupants and having more amenities. They are inevitably much more expensive.

Genuinely affordable housing is in very short supply and this fact has gotten steadily worse for decades. If we built more basic, decent housing that was a reasonable size, this would solve a lot of problems for a great many Americans. But we have made it incredibly hard, if not impossible, to do this. Zoning laws, federal regulations, tax incentives and financing mechanisms have helped create a situation where those that can afford to buy a house at all are crazy to not get the largest house they can afford and, at the same time, homelessness is on the rise.

It is madness.

They do this here in the UK, it's called housing benefit. Still get segregation due to affordability of housing, but in part it's there to get around issues suurounding ghettoised sink estates and allow people freedom to live where they need to live.

I believe that the government makes deals with landlords to rent below market rate (in exchange for an endless supply of tenants). To give someone market rate to go out and rent a place would likely cost more.

In the US, when given a section 8 housing voucher(which is practically impossible to get unless you just happened to sign up a decade ago.); you can take that voucher wherever you like.

In my county, all a Ladlord needs to do is comply with some sensible regulations, like have running water, and he's a section 8 landlord.

A lot of landlords, rent barely inhabitable units, or run down mobile homes, and make a tremendous amount of money.

I knew a doctor, who bought an old trailer lot, and turned it all section 8 units. He made a killing off the government.

The tenants were just happy to not be homeless.

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