Update on Odious Wall Street Article

A while ago, someone with an agenda wrote a very slanted article for the very conservative Wall Street Journal op-ed pages.  This article, Raising Hell in Subsidized Housing, showed that the author, James Bovard, was confused about the difference between project-based housing and tenant-based vouchers.  Very often he cited studies that included project-based housing units to argue against tenant-based vouchers, even though the studies he refers to argues in favor of tenant-based vocuhers.  I do a take-down here.

The National Association of Housing and Redevelopment Officials (NAHRO) wrote a response to the article, and I'm finaly getting around to linking to it.    NAHRO points out (as I did) that Mr. Bovard cherry-picked the facts that he thought would support his point, ignoring contradictory evidence.  NAHRO points out that there are studies and evidence in support of positive outcomes of the housing assistance programs:

In an attempt to characterize Section 8 voucher-assisted households as engaging in a greater percent of criminal acts than the general populace, he also cited an article by Hanna Rosin ("American Murder Mystery," from the Sept. 2008 issue of The Atlantic). However, this article was rebutted by Susan Popkin, who notes that "Rosin’s summary understates [the] positive results [of the research] and distorts the facts" and that she also disregards Stefanie DeLuca and colleagues’ recent findings that 15 to 20 years later, more than two-thirds of the families are still in better neighborhoods, and many mothers continue to enjoy employment gains and fewer require welfare." Claims from the Rosin article were also debunked by Xavier de Souza Briggs and NHI board member Peter Dreier.