BOB DOLE OH 'SOCIALISM' The majority leader takes careful aim, fires, and misses the point
Dreier, Peter
BOB DOLE ON 'SOCIALISM' It's all right for the rich Peter Dreier Speaking before the National Association of Realtors on April 29, Senator Bob Dole (R-Kans.) labeled public housing "one of the...
...labeled public housing "one of the last bastion's of socialism in the world...
...and another 1.06 million receive the kind of housing vouchers Dole lauded...
...ference between 30 percent of their income (the federal standard) and rents in private apartments...
...Two years ago, President Bill Clinton asked Congress to approve an extremely modest pilot program, called Moving to Opportunity (MTO), to help low-income inner-city families move to private apartments in better neighborhoods...
...Instead, he went for the cheap shot, scape-goating public housing for the poor as "socialism," while telling the powerful Realtors what they wanted to hear...
...This is almost three times the cost of a typical Section-8 housing voucher...
...One solution might be to put a ceiling on the mortgage interest deduction for homeowners, a "tax expenditure" that last year cost the federal government $58.3 billion-more than double the HUD budget...
...But Dole failed to endorse Packwood's proposal...
...Republicans now frequently use public housing as a metaphor for the failure of activist government...
...The average subsidy for this latter group last year was $9,763...
...If HUD is now identified in the public's mind with mismanagement and corruption, it's the GOP that should get much of the blame...
...The then-Democratic majority in Congress enacted the plan, but only over the objections of Dole's Republicans who called it "social engineering...
...But the major HUD scandal-where high government officials used agency funds to reward political friends and campaign contributors-took place during the Reagan administration...
...We subsidize the rich to purchase huge homes without helping hardworking families buy a small bungalow or most poor families to rent an apartment...
...They've made preserving the mortgage interest deduction the litmus test for their support...
...Is Dole now calling for a dramatic expansion of this approach...
...Where would we get the money for such a universal housing voucher program for the poor...
...So while only 28 percent of America's poor receive any federal housing assistance, 82.5 percent of households with incomes above $200,000 receive a mortgage tax break...
...First, public housing represents a tiny share of the nation's housing stock and even a relatively small part of HUD's budget...
...But the biggest secret about public housing is that most of it is well-managed...
...Last year taxpayers with incomes over $100,000 (5.65 percent of all returns) received $29 billion in mortgage interest deductions-half of the total amount...
...Almost a million families are now on waiting lists to get into public housing, a testament to the failure of private landlords to serve the poor...
...Dole could have demonstrated real leadership by telling the Realtors that the way we now distribute federal housing subsidy funds is wasteful and unfair...
...Almost all new federally funded housing developments have been sponsored by nonprofit community groups like churches and neighborhood associations...
...That's why HUD Secretary Henry Cisneros has approved plans to tear down the most severely distressed public housing projects...
...But it represents only a small fraction of the nation's housing for the poor...
...Dole told the Realtors that public housing had "failed" and that local housing authorities have become "landlords of misery...
...But that still leaves almost 10 million poor households to fend for themselves in the private housing marketplace, most of whom pay more than half of their incomes to keep a roof over their heads...
...Third, HUD's budget is dwarfed by the federal government's most expensive housing subsidy program, the mortgage interest deduction for homeowners, most of which goes to affluent households...
...In other words, the $29 billion in tax subsidies for those with incomes over $100,000 alone surpasses the entire HUD budget...
...Of those who receive housing aid, only 1.36 million families live in public housing units...
...The majority of units are in small and mid-size developments...
...Wealthy homeowners don't think of themselves as living in subsidized housing, but they get the bulk of the nation's federal housing help...
...another 1.65 million live in private, government-subsidized developments...
...The 1.6 million taxpayers with incomes over $200,000 received $12.6 billion in mortgage interest deductions...
...Department of Housing and Urban Development and recommended replacing government-assisted housing projects with housing vouchers to help poor Americans pay for rent in private housing...
...He called for dismantling the U.S...
...This may be linked to the fact that the real estate industry (including the National Association of Realtors, the National Association of Home-builders, and the American Bankers Association) is one of Dole's most generous campaign contributors...
...The savings could be used to expand the housing voucher program that Dole suddenly discovered...
...He's partly right, but mostly wrong...
...For Republicans, HUD has been an easy target...
...The Congressional Budget Office estimated that this would save the government more than $35 billion over five years, and affect only about 1.2 million of the wealthiest taxpayers...
...Subsidized housing for the poor is essentially a lottery, not an entitlement...
...Many older projects in the big cities are physically isolated, high-rise ghettos, underfunded and poorly maintained (see previous article...
...The current ceiling is $1 million...
...In other words, Dole opposes "socialism" for the poor but is all in favor of welfare for the rich...
...Last year, when Senator Bob Packwood was chair of the Senate Finance Committee, he suggested limiting the interest deduction to $250,000 in mortgage debt...
...The HUD budget, now $26 billion, provides housing subsidies to 4.1 million low-income households, that is, 28 percent of the 13.8 million poor renter households who are eligible for federal housing assistance...
...Dole's comments ignored some basic facts...
...Ironically, the National Association of Realtors and other housing industry groups sought to sabotage the program before it got started...
...Thus, the wealthiest 1.2 percent of all taxpayers received 21.6 percent of the homeowner tax subsidies...
...Clinton asked for $164 million to provide vouchers for 1,305 families in five cities...
...Warning about the specter of "socialism," they successfully lobbied to limit public housing to the poor so it wouldn't compete with privately owned housing...
...Based on the cost of the current Section 8-voucher program, it would cost about $30 billion a year to provide these 10 million poor families with vouchers to cover the difPeter Dreier is the E. P. Clapp Distinguished Professor of Politics and director of the Public Policy Program at Occidental College in Los Angeles...
...Second, we already have a housing voucher program, but the Republicans thwarted the Clinton administration's efforts to expand it...
...It certainly isn't primarily responsible for persistent poverty, racial segregation, and urban crime...
...During the Depression, public housing advocates, like their European counterparts, initially envisioned it for the middle class as well as the poor...
...Moreover, during the past decade, there's been almost no new public housing built...
Vol. 123 • June 1996 • No. 11
