Famous Neurosurgeon Ben Carson, who still has a job as Secretary of Housing and Urban Development for some reason, plans to announce some exciting new Fuck The Poor measures today, fulfilling Donald Trump’s campaign promise to really fuck the poor hard, for America. In addition to tripling the minimum amount of rent people in public housing must pay out of their own pocket, the new regulations will also impose work requirements for all non-disabled adults using public housing. Fortunately, this shouldn’t have any negative impacts on anyone, since the Republicans’ Big Fat Tax Cuts for Rich Fuckwads has made America so flush with jobs that everyone can get one, and pay three times a much for their Section 8 housing, too. At least in theory.
The Washington Post reports the proposed draft legislation, which would have to be passed by Congress, would affect some 4.5 million families who rely on federal housing assistance. As of now, tenants of public housing (or recipients of housing vouchers) must pay a minimum rent set at 30 percent of their adjusted income, with rents for the poorest families capped at $50 a month. The new rules Carson will roll out later today will require poor people to devote a bigger chunk of their income to rent, since poor people have obviously had too much extra cash until now:
The administration’s legislative proposal sets the family monthly rent contribution at 35 percent of gross income or 35 percent of their earnings working 15 hours a week at the federal minimum wage. Under the proposal, the cap for the poorest families would rise to approximately $150 a month, three times higher than the current minimum.
Guess that means poor folks will just have to stop being poor if they want a federally subsidized roof over their heads. Should be easy — just get rid of those wasteful iPhones, not to mention luxuries like refrigerators and color TVs.
In addition to requiring higher rent and imposing work requirements, the proposal will also make poor people a lot richer, at least for the sake of qualifying for public housing, by redefining their incomes:
HUD also seeks to change the deductions that could be considered when determining a tenant’s rent, eliminating deductions for medical and childcare costs.
No more “I have diabetes” or “I need to pay for daycare in order to work” as excuses to get a break on rent. Your boat better get itself up in the air, people, no matter what the tide’s doing.
Oh, sure, some liberal complainers like Diane Yentel, the president of the National Low Income Housing Coalition, think this is a bad idea; she told WaPo,
When we are in the middle of a housing crisis that’s having the most negative impact on the lowest income people, we shouldn’t even be considering proposals to increase their rent burdens.
Clearly, she doesn’t understand that if poor people aren’t given some incentives to become investment bankers, they just won’t make anything of themselves. This is a simple fact that is well understood by Ben Carson, who has always been proud of the fact that while his mom may have been on welfare when he was a kid, she was never dependent on government assistance, because unlike poor people today, she had character.
Of course, it may also have helped some that when Ben Carson was a child, public benefits were more generous than those of today, which he now wants to cut even further, but it would be a real shame to point that out to him, since it might undercut his personal mythology of having succeeded through grit and determination. (We are kidding — he wouldn’t see that as significant at all, because his mother worked hard. How dare you insult her!)
Besides, if poor people think they deserve a federal handout, why don’t they become oil companies, huh?
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[WaPo]
