School vouchers and housing vouchers, despite both being "vouchers", are two totally different animals. HOUSING vouchers give low-income people government money for housing, thus making them dependent on the government for support.

SCHOOL vouchers are a substitue for the money that government puts into providing "free" public schools - they would be given to everyone with children, allowing more freedom of choice in school selection. Right now, putting a child in a private school is paying for school service twice, and few people can afford to do that. A voucher would allow people to redirect the money already paid in taxes to the school of their choice, thus allowing more people to pay for private schooling.

Folks should be concerned about State & Feds getting the bright idea to turn much of the foreclosed homes into Section 8 housing.

T-Shirt Doc and Mailman
Where do you live? maybe we can concentrate them in your neighborhood
By Dave in Duluth @ 06/04/09 12:37:48 PM
The whole point,Dave is NOT to concentrate them in any ONE area.Put one house in a neighborhood,not a whole apartment complex.And I already have such a house in my neighborhood,and there is no problem as long as they are not CONCENTRATED there.

Several months ago I read an excellent article about the efforts in Memphis to battle crime. The article was all about how quite by accident the police chief stumbled across the correlation between Section 8 housing and crime. It started when he was having what had normally been quiet neighborhoods suddenly starting to have an increase in crime. The areas seemed to be random and nobody to that point had made the connection, but through sheer luck somebody who worked in his office was married to woman who was doing a separate project for the city in regards to housing. One night she left her maps out and the guy working for the police department thought they were his research maps. Lo and behold they soon discovered that as sections of Memphis opened up to Section 8 housing crime in that area would increase.
Armed with this data the police chief was able to adjust his patrols in anticipation of areas that would be receiving section 8 people and therefore keep a lid on the crime.
I do not have the link but you should be able to find it by searching the web for Memphis and Section 8

Where do you live? maybe we can concentrate them in your neighborhood

I worked very hard to be successful, nobody gave me a college education or my job. I earned it. I do not want these parasites provided homes anywhere near me.

While you usually agree with me 90% of the time,I think you are off with this stand on the welfare neighborhoods.When you concentrate this type of lifestyle in an area it makes it a strong society.Concentrating anything is making it stronger.Thinning out the welfare and section eight people will weaken their influence.The type of illegal activity that goes on in concentrated welfare type neighborhoods would not be tolerated in more diverse areas.Neighbors would report drug deals and loud late night disturbances in contrast to the acquiescence that goes on in the "hood"now.I have advocated separating them for years.Separate and weaken the sphere of influence.

I agree with the talkmaster on this one. however, if house vouchers are a bad idea, aren't school vouchers bad, too? Aren't they just more forms of handouts?

Neal, to take this a little further, how about school choice - one for future felons (gangs and their leaders), one for delinquents who don't want to learn, one for those who do but are disadvantaged and one for those who work hard, excell, and do not deserve to be held back by the aforementioned students? A little off the subject, I know....

I bet you can find physically identical housing units elsewhere that are populated by sane, productive people. It's not the housing units that breed crime.

Those folk can go buy a whole Katrina trailer for 5 bucks.

Providing they can scrape up 5 bucks, I mean.

Don't you realize, you Blockhead, that it's all Bush' Fault ?!