Hacker News Reader

Comment by megaman821 | Hacker News Reader

Most of the social help programs that I have seen so far, except for unemployment, are overrun by scammers. I lived in a section 8 apartment for a while and the same people qualifying for $25/month rents were driving Escalades. For these people there is nothing at this point in their lives that is going to change they way they live and think. Educating their kids is the only way to break the cycle of poverty.

View on HN

> the same people qualifying for $25/month rents were driving Escalades

I have not known this to be true. The handful of people I know who qualify for section 8 don't own cars, or have 15yo beaters.

I can't say I have done a formal study, it is just an observation in a single city. The Mint Blog published some numbers on illegal immigrants where it was claimed that over 60% of section 8 was claimed by them. Most of them get paid in cash so it is easy to adjust whatever they make to meet the section 8 qualifications. Also a lot of the households have more than one adult working so going over the $30k qualification threshold doesn't take that good of job if it is split between 2 or 3 people.

There are definitely people that have fallen on hard times and people on disability that needs the help section 8 provides, it just makes me angry that they are in the minority of people being helped.

Just curious. Why do you think unemployment isn't overrun by scamers?

I don't know what it's like in the US, but here in Sweden unemployment is a high risk low return program to scam. You have to show up to regular meetings and show that you are actively looking for work, and if you're really unlucky the unemployment office will actually find you a job that you have to take or risk loosing unemployment. So as such you are much better scamming things like medical disability, which is at least as much money but a lot less work on your part.

Every time (moderate hyperbole) one of my pizza drivers (I did that for 7 years) would deliver a pizza to either a trailer park or a ghetto... there'd be a 52" plasma sitting in the living room.

And then they'd apologize for being too poor to tip.

So what? This guy probably won 500 bucks in the lottery.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com