If anything Sec. 8 places more money into the rentable housing industry, which would support the rationale for building, developing, and rehabbing more rental properties. In the long term it can help increase housing supply. Yes, Sec. 8 might make it harder for some non-sec 8 tenants to find housing in a locale temporarily, but there might not be as much housing supply in general without sec. 8 either.

For example, without sec 8, whether he accepts it or not, there might not have been enough total renters on the market for the blog writer to become a landlord without the increase in demand from local section 8 usage.

Also, your anecdotal evidence is based on one situation. I think whether or not it is a sec 8 or non-sec 8 tenant the trick is to screen them and collect enough evidence for any reason you reject a potential tenant, but not others. I’ve personally seen bad tenants (non-sec kept in an apartment building from legal threat from the local ACLU. I normally respect them at the national level, but they make some really bad decisions on the local level.

I would just like to address the point made Meg who said, “Accepting Section 8 tenants would be to take a role in [promoting government assistance programs], and it’s something I just won’t do.”

While I agree with some of your points, I feel one amazing difference with the Section8 program is that it’s the only assistance program I know of in the entire country where WE get to decide who benefits from it. Landlords pick their own tenants in Section8. You get to decide if someone is a system abuser and you can decide not to rent to them. Or you can decide to rent to the hard-working single mother who’s just trying to make a better life for her kids by getting them out of the bad neighborhood she would otherwise afford. If all Section8 landlords kept this in mind (which they don’t) the program would be better. But by having people who could be potentially great screeners NOT participate in the program, it also loses something.

It’s a good, helpful program. However, there are those that abuse it and make it even more difficult for tenants like myself who just needed a helping hand in working toward making a better life for their family. I honestly feel embarrassed and less than, having read some of the comments posted here. It all depends on the person, not so much the economic level they reside on. We aren’t all ghetto, wild, loud, unappreciative, lazy bums looking for a handout. There are those of us who indeed just needed a hand gaining solid, stable footing.

It was a real pain to work through the program, but well worth it as this is getting someone in a property that was very difficult to get rented.

In our case, the gov’t pays all but $1 of the monthly rent.