…sang Paul Simon. So, it follows that one person’s misfortune is potentially another person’s good fortune. That appears to be the case for families who lost their homes during the subprime mortgage debacle and the investors who bought them at a bargain. But, investors’ good fortune won’t last long if they can’t sell or rent the foreclosed homes. And that’s where the federal Section 8 rent voucher program comes in.
The program, which dates back to the 1970s, subsidizes rents in privately-owned housing that, until recently, was concentrated in densely populated areas. Today, the program offers investors who can’t find buyers a way to recoup their investment and maintain the property. In doing so, it opens up “fresh swaths of suburbia…to the very people it has so often excluded,” the Washington Post reported in 2011.
About two million American families have Section 8 vouchers, a fraction of those who need them. “But they are a lucky fraction. In the recession-era economy, the voucher is becoming a golden ticket to almost anywhere, a point hardly lost on Liza Jackson,” a Section 8 recipient who peruses rentals on Section 8 web sites “that offer everything from chic new condominiums in Miami to four-bedrooms in Phoenix, Las Vegas, and Atlanta.”
