Bid to Pay Rent Subsidies to Landlords Killed by GOP[/B]
Is the landlord getting paid directly or not?
Apparently not.
During their Feb. 11 meeting, the Niagara County Legislature's Community Services Committee killed a home rule proposal that would have required rent subsidies for welfare recipients to be paid directly to their landlords.
The proposal was put forth by the Democratic Minority Caucus last month in a series of bills that would have also imposed criminal penalties for welfare tenants who misappropriate their housing funds. But it was killed by the Republicans and, in a surprise move, a Democratic defector.<SNIP>
Rent Assistance Often Goes Elsewhere
“Their own money,” Owen Steed says, of welfare money allocated for rent, that some tenants choose to use for other purposes, thereby stiffing the landlord.
Is it their money or the landlord's?
This is a large part of the problem: government grants of assistance for people in need are being viewed as entitlements by an ever expanding number of people.
That the recipients do not earn this money, that it was produced by the labor of another, and taken from them by threat of force, no longer matters. Stigma and shame have all but disappeared from the public sphere.
Where private charity of days gone by carried with it the co-equal responsibility that beneficiaries be good neighbors and citizens, the government requires no such charge.
The welfare tenant gets his/her welfare money based on the requirement that he or she has an apartment and is paying rent.
In fact the landlord is at the mercy of the tenant because there are plenty of places to choose from in a depressed real estate market.
If you do not require the tenant to pay the landlord, the landlord is helpless because the tenants know they can just move every two or three months, and skip out on their obligation to pay rent.
If the landlord is unable to collect a rent, then he is unable to pay the expenses of the property and the property will fall into decay and foreclosure.