Single Mothers Feel Abandoned by Section 8 Operations

• Author: Kelly Cooke
• Posted: 2024-03-09

According to available federal data on welfare programs, Section 8 is one of the largest assistance programs in America yet also remains one of its most underfunded. The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) controls Section 8 via federal funding, which HUD then passes on to the states. However, over the past two years, HUD's overall budget has been cut by more than half. Politicians and the corporate media might tell you one thing in public, but all of the data is freely available and clear. Joe Biden's administration and Congress slashed HUD's budget in half in 2020, and then slashed it again in 2021, and so now Section 8 doesn't really operate as it was planned. Instead of getting people into homes, it just gets people onto waiting lists. One of the most affected demographics in America is single mothers.

There are a lot of underlying reasons why there are so many single mothers in the United States. Some universities and organizations spend millions of dollars a year to study it. Regardless of what the causal factors are, the reality persists that more and more single mothers find themselves in need of housing, and they are far too often unable to get it because Section 8 simply isn't available for them. In states like California and New York, for instance, they have outright declared themselves to be sanctuary states for illegal immigrants. This is against federal law, but there is no federal apparatus that can stop states from doing this, and so states basically do what they want to do. For a lot of people, this is actually a good thing in their opinion. For single mothers, it's disastrous.

You won't hear a lot about it on the news, because that would mean going against the populous decree that America's borders being open is a great thing for the economy, but the number-one demographic in states like New York and California on Section 8 is the illegal immigrant demographic. The issue is that when states say that they're going to offer sanctuary, this doesn't simply mean protection from federal law offered by the states. It goes beyond California keeping ICE from doing investigations and arrests. It means that these states view migrants as full citizens, showering them with the same sorts of benefits to which citizens are entitled, and for which citizens pay.

So, in California, for instance, when the state announces that they're going to be offering Section 8, immigrants are the first people to show up. The same goes for food assistance, phones and Internet access, and other other entitlement programs. Immigrants show up first and in the largest numbers. Since these states bill themselves as actuaries, they do not turn the immigrants away. So, when there are only so many properties to get via Section 8, the number of immigrants vastly outnumber the needy single mothers, and so single mothers statistically are pushed back and end up on waiting lists.

Shockingly, many Americans do not care about this when they hear it. They believe that non-citizens should get first crack at citizen-based safety net programs due to social justice and compassion. For the first time in America's history, single mothers have taken up enough space on the homelessness statistics sheet to warrant their own section. That is truly frightening.
 

No Sign of New Funding

What's also frightening about Section 8 in general is that there is no new funding coming in. Congress is trying to shove through a $1.7 trillion omnibus spending bill right now (as of Dec 22), and within its 4,000 pages, not one extra penny for HUD can be found. There's another $40 billion for Ukraine, and billions more in aid for additional countries; but when it comes to helping American citizens keep a roof over their heads, there is not one single line out of 4,000 pages that even speaks to Section 8 being underfunded, much less that offers more money for the program.

The competition is crippling Section 8. It's not necessarily that the people taking up more space are illegal immigrants; it's that there's only a limited amount of homes and a limited amount of funding. If you have 8 pieces of pizza to feed people, then you realize the fact is that every new person you feed has to necessarily get a much smaller slither of a piece, until which point you can't give any more away. You have to put people on waiting lists.

That's what is happening to single mothers in America, and nothing is being done about it.