Edgar Olson is calling for an end to public housing as we know it. Rather than sticking poor families in federally run housing projects, the University of Virginia economics professors argues, the government should give them vouchers. (Read the UVa profile here.)
“It costs much less to provide equally good housing with housing vouchers than with public housing projects,” Olsen wrote in a prepared statement he was scheduled to deliver in testimony to Congress Wednesday. “Therefore, shifting the budget for public housing to housing vouchers would allow us to serve all of the families served by public housing equally well … and serve hundreds of thousands of additional families.”
The federal government has proven itself to be one of the world’s worst property managers, but it is proficient at redistributing income. It just makes sense: Instead of building housing for poor people, just stroke them a check to find an apartment of their own.
Vouchers would make good social policy too, a point that the brief article doesn’t make. Housing projects concentrate poor people in places where there are few successful role models and few working/middle class people to constrain criminal behavior. Giving poor people vouchers gives them more latitude in where they live.
Sounds great… except for one thing. It’s the old slippery slope argument. Give ’em vouchers for housing, and the next thing you know, they’ll be asking for vouchers for schools. Can’t have that!
