Chicago’s public housing divide, a Watchdogs / BGA special report

Good investigative piece that exposes lots of corruption in Chicago with how the "Section 8" or "housing choice voucher" works.

Seems many deserving people can qualify for rent subsidies that allows them to choose their own place to live.

But what happens is owners get paid sky-high rents by the governments involved and the "renters" pay a tiny fraction.

Too bad the governments are all in deep debt and taxpayers keep getting the royal screws.

Lots of examples in the article....

Chicago’s public housing divide, a Watchdogs / BGA special report

After buying a home in Barrington Hills, Chaoshan Lai and his wife couldn’t unload the 15-year-old townhouse that they’d bought for $935,000 in Central Station, a taxpayer-subsidized development in the South Loop where former Mayor Richard M. Daley lived for years.

Lai couldn’t even find anyone to rent the townhouse on South Prairie Avenue — until he got a call in 2013 about a woman who’d gotten a “housing choice voucher,” from the Chicago Housing Authority through a program that had long been called Section 8.

Lai says the woman wanted to lease his three-bedroom, three-and-a-half bath home, which has a library and is within walking distance of Soldier Field and the lakefront.


It ended up being a good deal for Lai. Since June 1, 2013, he’s collected more than $100,000 from the CHA, which administers public housing in Chicago for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. The CHA pays him $3,911 a month in federal funds to lease his townhouse to the woman and three others in her household, including a child under the age of 6, records show.

Sounds Like Discriminative Socialism

$4000 to rent.

That's a freggin house payment.

Ludicrous.

a reply to: xuenchen

As a property owner and real estate investor I can say that I would charge double to have these types of renters in my properties. In general section 8 folks don't have any pride of ownership and destroy much of what is in the apartment. It is extremely demoralizing to rehab a property only to have to find it destroyed beyond recognition 12 months later. Also, dealing with rules and regulations of the government are a pain and frankly charging double or more for the inconvenience of housing these people seems more than fair to me.

I don't do section 8 housing, but I have friends that do and I feel for them.

a reply to: xuenchen


There is another problem with housing in Chicago. several years ago a large complex of high-rise apartments was notorious for the amount of drugs and crime that happened within its bounds. (I suspect that law enforcement was purposely slow or did little to solve the problem.)

What did solve the problem was a city initiative to destroy the complex and build expensive apartments and condos on that lake view spot. And so it was done. Everybody did well except those displaced. They were forced, in a fashion, to move to less expensive areas downstate. The downstate areas of Peoria, Danville, Champaign, Urbana, Springfield, Mattoon and Charleston have felt the result. These days in those areas weekend drug shootings among young blacks are common news items.

originally posted by: xuenchen
Good investigative piece that exposes lots of corruption in Chicago with how the "Section 8" or "housing choice voucher" works.

Housing vouchers need a lot of reform. They're a good idea but from what I've seen there's not enough oversight on costs and your story is a good example. I can give a personal anecdote as well, a friend of mine is disabled and he legitimately cannot work (he's in a wheel chair so his options are pretty limited, throw in the need for medicaid and he can't earn any income). His income is about $750/month, but his apartment rent is $1000, yet he only pays $50. His apartment is a 3 bedroom despite it being just him. He pulled this off by getting a medical professional in his family to sign a form stating he needed the other two rooms. One as an art studio to maybe earn some money, and the other to hold his medical equipment. In reality he doesn't use either. He could be paying $600/month for a 1 bedroom, still getting assistance, and the state would save enough money to help another person.

That's where the real problem with this program comes in, they're budgeted for $x/year, but they don't really look at how they spend that money. They spend it on high rents, and as a result few needy people are able to get assistance. If they had a few more oversights on the money it would go twice as far. I'm not saying that a 4 member household doesn't need 3 bedrooms, because they probably do (they certainly need atleast 2), but I find it very hard to believe rents are so high that $4000/month is the typical going rate for such a dwelling.

Meanwhile, people who do work hard, etc get to pay market rents and mortgages to live in those areas. "Opportunity Area"... good grief. Getting to live in a subsidized million dollar condo is not an "opportunity" it is ripping off tax payers.