62 People Injured Applying for Government Subsidized Housing

[happy_liberal]

How's this for terrifying? The housing crisis has become so severe in this country that earlier this week, as Megan Cottrell wrote, a "mob scene" broke out and 62 people were injured when triple the expected number of applicants showed up to apply for government-subsidized housing in an Atlanta suburb.

The East Point Housing Authority severely underestimated the number of people who would come to a local shopping center on Wednesday to obtain Section 8 applications, which, for some lucky individuals, will eventually lead to obtaining affordable housing vouchers. In all, some 30,000 people showed up — an astounding three-quarters of the town's population. Some people waited in line for as long as two days.

Confusion and frustration, combined with the Georgia summer heat, eventually took its toll on the crowd, and things turned ugly. Some people collapsed in the heat, while others rushed the building that housed the applications. As chaos started to take hold, adults and children began getting trampled. One baby went into a seizure. By the time the police got control of the situation, 20 people needed to be transferred to the hospital for medical care.

You can almost smell the desperation of those East Point residents, can't you? They were desperate for a reason: Section 8 currently accommodates about 15,000 people in the entire state of Georgia — and at least 30,000 people are in need of housing assistance in East Point alone. Thousands upon thousands of additional Georgians are on housing wait lists, but the majority of the lists in the Atlanta area have been closed for months, or in some cases years, due to the increase in demand for affordable housing that has come along with the Great Recession.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=post&forum=389&topic_id=8955696&mesg_id=8955696

[Taverner]

1. It means, as Jim so elquently put it "The whole SHITHOUSE is going up in flames"

Of course today, he would just say "BRAAAAAAAAIIINSSSSSSSS!!!!"

[happy_liberal]

2. In other news today...

"Overbuilding in the boom years that preceded the economic recession has resulted in too many houses available for the level of demand" the president said.

[bobbolink]

4. No, in other news...Atlanta On Track to Demolish All Its Public Housing

The nation's first public housing project, Techwood Homes, was built in Atlanta in 1936. Atlanta has long had the highest percentage of its residents living in public housing, though that # was still less than 4% (at least through the 1970s). Within a year, it will have demolished all of its old projects. This article laying out ATL's plans is full of interesting, valid and opposing views.

There's the standard chestnut about the exponential problems of concentrated poverty, without any acknowledgment that the reason warehousing poor people has become so problematic is because we stopped sufficiently investing in their housing and social service needs a long time ago. There's the true statement that most residents support "relocation" - but this reality is distanced from the equal realities that only about 20% of public housing residents qualify for the new units, and the rest end up living in the poorest neighborhoods of Atlanta, where opportunities are not much better. The correlation between the ability to pick up and relocate successfully and the outcomes - that "those who move are more likely to find work, their children were likely to perform better in school and they report higher satisfaction with their living conditions" - is not clarified.

Deconcentrating poverty is a skimming strategy that worsens inequality. If you can weather relocation and stringent eligibility requirements, then you should really benefit from a new unit in a refurbished neighborhood with more amenities. If a disability, age, language barriers, economic hardship, or any other issue should disqualify you from the new place or make multiple moves hard on you, then you're likely to be cast out on your own into the market, with only a voucher in hand. This may be the freedom of choice we Americans so cherish, but it also leaves the most vulnerable among the poorest of poor people of color worse off in an insecure, overcrowded, unaffordable housing market.

Cheer all you want for fancier neighborhoods closer to your job with some poor neighbors beside you to keep it real, neighbors who may benefit in real, substantial ways. But don't forget all those displaced by the concentration of government subsidy and developer money for a mere two in ten poor Atlanta residents.
?v=0

http://uspoverty.change.org/blog/view/atlanta_on_track_to_demolish_all_its_public_housing

[bobbolink]

3. For years, Sapphire Blue tried to get DUers to campaign for more low-income housing.

She was basically ignored on that point.

People here want to do what the RW does.... tout charity, and their charitable works.

I have tried to carry on and keep pushing for low-income housing.

It is simply not of interest.

Thom Hartmann doesn't talk about it, neither does Keith or Rachel or any of the others. It isn't on the lists of priorities posted here on DU so often.

So, what has happened is predictable, and it is now time for us to consider ourselves just as responsible for it as those who fight it. Doing nothing is just as bad as working against it.

Go ahead and slap me around for finally saying it, because I no longer care. WE ARE CULPABLE.

[Hatchling]

5. Yeah our section 8 Office has that wired.

You can only apply on line. You can only be notified of your status online. If you actually go down to the office, you cannot speak to anyone at all except a tough receptionist who is guarded by two suspicious rentacops. You are allowed to put an unsealed envelope into a drop box after the guards peek into it.

Even if you are fortunate enough to find a phone number to talk with a worker they won't connect you if you do not have a current recipients file number.

You go on the list and that is all you hear about it until 5-8 years later your app comes up,if you are lucky.

[bobbolink]

6. And, yet.... here on DU, if the subject of lack of housing comes up, all people talk about is

that "you can get government housing" or... they talk about "shelters".

That is it.

Just the lack of response to this thread shows exactly how much "liberals" care.

ZILCH

[Donnachaidh]

7. kick and Rec! n/t