Originally Posted by
Valiant Woman
Dr. Carson is now getting a lot of flack for possibly increasing the rent for families in Federal housing. My question is how long should taxpayers continue to support able-bodied adults?
I’m not talking about the disabled or elderly disabled. I’m talking about grown folks living on the gubmit dole.
HUD Secretary Ben Carson planning to increase rent for low-income families in federal housing.
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/poli...icle-1.3954170
From the article....
Wood: Because you’ve now been there long enough, you’ve really had a chance to see the landscape and say, “OK, here’s what’s working, here’s what’s not working when it comes to housing policy.” You’ve recently come forward with a pretty bold suggestion that you want to make some changes in terms of how those who receive assistance for public housing, what they have to do to get it. And as you already know, I don’t have to tell you, there are those out there who say you’re going to put people on the streets with your new policies. That you’re going to increase homelessness. How do you react to that?
Carson: I would first of all say nobody’s going to be put on the streets. We’ve gone through the numbers very carefully to make sure that that doesn’t happen. We’ve made sure that rents are not increased for the elderly or the disabled.
We are being realistic as we look at it. We knew what the budget was—with the budgetary constraints that we had to work with—and so we had to make some changes in the rent structure in order to conform with that budget.
Now, there’s a possibility that budget’s going to be plused up if there’s no rescission, which gives us a little more flexibility. So this is really a starting point in the conversation....
....You look at the national debt, $20 trillion. By the year 2048, every dollar the federal government takes in will be used to service the debt. There’ll be no money for any programs.
What we really do is start thinking ahead, but also recognizing that the federal government has been responsible for creating a system that causes people not to necessarily want to work, because if they make more money, their rent goes up, or they may no longer be eligible for their apartment, and this is a nonstarter. So we really need to figure out a way to incentivize people while at the same time providing them with the help that they need in order to move up that ladder.
In the past, when people started moving up the ladder of self-sufficiency, we pulled the rug out from underneath them. I don’t want to do that.
We have to understand that in 30 states you can actually make more money from just sitting back and receiving entitlements than you can from working a minimum-wage job, so it shouldn’t surprise us that a lot of people elect to take the first option.
What they don’t actually understand is that if you take the minimum-wage job, you gain skills, relationships, opportunities that you would not otherwise have had, and in the long run you end up in a much better place. And this is where we really want people to be.....