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Earlier this month, footage of the McKinney pool party in Texas included accusations that whites at the community pool told Black teens, “Go back to your Section 8 home,” speaking to the assumption that the youths lived in government-supported housing.
The Washington Post dug into the history of public housing and how it transitioned from a haven for working class white families (especially war veterans’ families) after World War I to hovels for lower-income residents who are predominantly Black or Hispanic. Currently, those who live in government housing often live on a yearly salary of $13,000 or less.
The first housing projects were created in 1937 for the “upwardly mobile working class” where the family structure consisted of fathers who worked in factory jobs and were married to the mother of their children. Families that had children out of wedlock during that time were rejected from public housing opportunities. Those who were too poor didn’t receive housing and continued to live in America’s major cities’ tenement apartments.
By the mid-twentieth century, white families grew their wealth and education skills and moved to suburbs leaving behind cities with high levels of poverty. Urban areas like Chicago and Detroit began to see an increase in the number of Blacks residing in public housing. Meanwhile, new public housing projects constructed by the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) were mostly single-family homes. After funding highways and roads to the newly-developed areas, the government collaborated with the Veteran’s Administration to guarantee cheaper mortgages (costs comparable to public housing prices) for the families who moved there. Black families could not participate in this new program.
Urban public housing projects are are indeed majority Black today — “Within the Detroit Housing Commission, according to HUD data, 99 percent of public housing residents are black. Within the D.C. Housing Authority and the Housing Authority of New Orleans, 98 percent are,” says WaPo — but the majority of residents who receive housing assistance nationwide are not Black. Once poverty began to increase in public housing spaces, violence, lack of employment and broken families became associated with these areas. New legislation created “Section 8″ housing through a voucher program that gave residents the freedom to use their housing subsidies to pay private landlords. But everyone continues to use the term Section 8, and associate it with the worse housing conditions.
The article points out that the US, right now, has big issues with the poor, believing that that they are moral failures rather than people struggling to make a better way for themselves and their families. It has become harder to gain access to help for necessities such as food and shelter (legislation in a number of places have become more strict). And these sorts of stigmas usually extend to groups along racial lines.
Do you think hurling the words “Section 8″ at someone is a slur?
