Long before Hurricane Katrina deepened the nation's need for low-income housing, the government had a history of sheltering those in need.
Subsidized housing dates to the Great Depression and the creation of what was known as public housing. In urban areas throughout the nation, the government built large concentrations of apartments and opened them to the very poor.
Today such dwellings are commonly called "the projects" and are the most visible and perhaps infamous kind of publicly subsidized housing.
But subsidized housing is all around us -- in the suburbs and in urban areas -- and has been for more than three decades through a program known as Section 8. Participants may live anywhere an owner will accept a government voucher that provides a portion of the rent.
Vouchers help some of the very low-income, the elderly and the disabled.
The program also has helped stabilize people whose lives have been turned upside down by homelessness, addiction or catastrophe.
After the 1994 Northridge earthquake, the rents of about 15,000 households in Southern California were subsidized by emergency Section 8 vouchers. Following Hurricane Katrina, organizations such as the National Low-Income Housing Coalition called on the government to issue similar vouchers.
In September, the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Department of Housing and Urban Development unveiled a new voucher program for some hurricane victims, such as the homeless or those already receiving housing aid. The Katrina Disaster Housing Assistance Program is "essentially an extension of the Section 8 voucher program," said Brian Sullivan, a spokesman for HUD in Washington.
Question: Why was Section 8 created?
Answer: Critics argued that concentrating poor people in housing projects spawned a number of social ills. In 1970, Congress authorized the creation of the Housing Allowance Experiment, HUD's first program of rent subsidies. The program started with 30,000 households. In 1974 under President Nixon, the Section 8 program was created as an alternative to new housing projects. Under another component of the Section 8 program, apartment owners agreed with HUD to keep rents low. Tenants' rents are subsidized as long as they live in the building and qualify for the program.
Q: Why is it called Section 8?
