美国国家公共电台 NPR Section 8 Vouchers Help The Poor — But Only If Housing Is Available

 

KELLY MCEVERS, HOST:

For people who are a step away from homelessness, getting a housing voucher¹ can feel like a way to a better life, but it isn't a guarantee. NPR and the PBS show "Frontline" have been examining the billions that taxpayers² spend to house the poor. Today, Section 8 housing vouchers³ - the program that helps people pay rent. But only 1 in 4 people who need help, get any.

NPR's Laura Sullivan introduces us to two women - one who just got a voucher and another who doesn't want low-income housing in her neighborhood. Together they illustrate⁴ a central question for housing policy - where should poor people live?

LAURA SULLIVAN, BYLINE⁵: Early every morning, Farryn Giles gets her 6-year-old son up for school in a rundown apartment complex in Dallas.

FARRYN GILES: What time is it?

ISAIAH: Seven, two, one.

GILES: 7:21.

SULLIVAN: Giles is 26.

GILES: So I want you to put your shoes on, OK?

SULLIVAN: And at the moment, she's staying with her ex-husband. Before she was here, she was sleeping on and off in her car.

GILES: We got to walk kind of fast, too, because if we don't, then you're not going to get to school in time for breakfast.

SULLIVAN: Giles recently hit what to her might as well have been the jackpot. She was awarded a Section 8 housing Choice Voucher. It will pay the difference between her rent and what she can afford to pay, but there's a catch. She has to find a landlord willing to take it. She has 90 days. And in hot rental⁶ markets like Dallas, that's going to be hard. Giles says she's determined⁷.

GILES: It took me six years to get my voucher, but I got it. You can best believe I'm going to utilize⁸ it.

SULLIVAN: More than 2 million families now use vouchers to keep from becoming homeless, but Congress also had bigger plans for the $18 billion program. The voucher was designed to be a ticket out of poverty because families can use it wherever they want. They can move to places with jobs, good schools and low crime. And that's what Giles wants, too.

She recently got a new job doing online customer service work. It's a big break for her. It pays $11.50 an hour, but it's way up north in one of Dallas' well-off suburbs. It'll take an hour and a half by bus to get there. She's hoping the voucher will help her and her son find a place nearby.

GILES: I'm a 26-year-old divorcee with a six-year-old son, like, hello? Goals, ambition - I don't spend my money in those places. I'm a homebody. You saw my kitchen? I like to cook. I'm at home making caramel from scratch at 2 o'clock in the morning. That's what I was doing at 2. I'm cooking. For me, this is a huge opportunity to make what I wanted to make out of my life.

SULLIVAN: A few months later, I checked in on Giles, and things weren't going so well.

GILES: I'm in the market for a new apartment. Are you guys accepting the Section 8 Vouchers right now?

SULLIVAN: She had made hundreds of phone calls to the northern suburbs and elsewhere.

GILES: I've been to the Oak Cliff. I've been to South Dallas. I've been to Pleasant Grove⁹. I've been way down south. Nobody wants my voucher.

SULLIVAN: Giles is not alone. In Dallas, around 60 percent of people who get new vouchers are unable to use them. It's worse in Dallas, but the challenge is similar in many cities where rents are high.

Giles was having even more trouble moving north, and I wanted to find out why. I heard about a developer who was trying to build an apartment complex with room for some voucher holders¹⁰ near the well-off enclaves of McKinny and Frisco.

Hi.

TERRI ANDERSON: Hello, how are you?

SULLIVAN: Hi, I'm a Laura.

Developer Terri Anderson steps out of a construction trailer on a site just on the border of the two cities. She says ever since people found out she planned to accept some lower-income residents, she's had nothing but problems.

ANDERSON: The city actually called a public hearing for our property and about 250 angry residents showed up. Our superintendent¹¹ has been threatened, issued a criminal trespass¹² warning. Police officers blocked our entrance.

SULLIVAN: And she has a theory why that is.

ANDERSON: It is a concerted effort to shut down development of a property they do not want in their neighborhood.

SULLIVAN: Frisco City officials say they support affordable¹³ housing and her project and say Anderson has not followed the city's building requirements. Meanwhile, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development has opened an investigation¹⁴ into whether Frisco and McKinney are violating the Federal Fair Housing Law.

I went to talk with one of the neighbors who opposes the development. Nicole Humphrey lives a few miles down the road. As we stood outside her newly built house at twilight¹⁵, she said she, like other neighbors, is concerned about traffic and school overcrowding. But she also had other reasons.

NICOLE HUMPHREY: This neighborhood - most of us, I feel like, are stay-at-home moms with young kids. The lifestyle I feel like that goes with Section 8 is usually working single moms or people who are struggling to keep their heads above water. And it's not - I feel so bad saying that. It's just not people who are the same class as us.

SULLIVAN: Some people would say, you know, look, their kids are not going to have the opportunities that your kids are going to have in this neighborhood.

HUMPHREY: Right.

SULLIVAN: Can they share in that?

HUMPHREY: The problem with that is I hear a lot of that unfair of, oh, we haven't been given this or that, or we haven't been afforded things that you might have been afforded. I don't look at multimillionaires and think, why don't I have a yacht? Why don't I have a private jet? It's a mindset, I feel like.

SULLIVAN: As we walk past the tidy rows of houses, Humphrey said the issue for her is not about race. Her neighborhood is actually pretty diverse, but she said she worries the voucher holders won't fit in. She paused for a moment on the corner and said she doesn't think the voucher holders will understand her.

HUMPHREY: People see that I'm upper-middle class and that I'm a woman who stays at home who is kept by her husband, and instantly my opinion doesn't matter. They look at me, and they think, oh, she has never experienced a problem that we're having.

SULLIVAN: Wait, you think that people are going to come to the apartment complex and stereotype¹⁶ you?

HUMPHREY: Oh, definitely. I mean, I've been told that I am a racist¹⁷ or a bigot or whatever just because I am more on board with living with people who are in the same socioeconomic status that we are.

SULLIVAN: Do you think that you maybe are stereotyping¹⁸ the folks...

HUMPHREY: Oh, I totally am. It works both ways.

SULLIVAN: So it makes me wonder if there's a lot more fear and sort of...

HUMPHREY: Oh, I think it's totally fear and stigma¹⁹. It's fear of the - I think probably fear of the unknown.

SULLIVAN: I'm trying to figure out what the solution is here.

HUMPHREY: I don't have a solution, and I don't know that we will ever come to that solution as a culture in America in general. There is always going to be somebody with less because the fair world doesn't exist, and where does that line lie?

SULLIVAN: Farryn Giles knows exactly where the line lies. It lies between north and south Dallas. And across the country, the line is just a start. A study last fall found only 13 percent of female voucher holders with children were able to use them in neighborhoods with opportunity. Sitting on a bench on a 15-minute break outside her customer service job, Giles says she has an idea of how people up north see her.

GILES: I think that they think that we're lazy and worthless and getting over. Even though we're financially less capable, we still love our children the same.

SULLIVAN: After three months of trying, Giles was unable to get anyone to take her voucher, and she turned it back in.

GILES: Section 8 is not any type of simplification for our lives. It's not easier. I mean, society hasn't really grown the way people think that it has. And that's how I feel about that. Can't all have a happy ending, I suppose.

SULLIVAN: When I last checked in with Giles, she and her son had moved into a public housing complex in Dallas. Laura Sullivan, NPR News.

(SOUNDBITE OF PORCAS BORBOLETAS SONG, "ANINHA")

1 voucher   

n.收据；传票；凭单，凭证

参考例句：

• The government should run a voucher system.政府应该施行凭证制度。
• Whenever cash is paid out,a voucher or receipt should be obtained.无论何时只要支付现金，就必须要有一张凭据或者收据。

2 taxpayers   

纳税人，纳税的机构( taxpayer的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• Finance for education comes from taxpayers. 教育经费来自纳税人。
• She was declaiming against the waste of the taxpayers' money. 她慷慨陈词猛烈抨击对纳税人金钱的浪费。

3 vouchers   

n.凭证( voucher的名词复数 )；证人；证件；收据

参考例句：

• These vouchers are redeemable against any future purchase. 这些优惠券将来购物均可使用。
• This time we were given free vouchers to spend the night in a nearby hotel. 这一次我们得到了在附近一家旅馆入住的免费券。 来自英语晨读30分（高二）

4 illustrate   

v.举例说明，阐明；图解，加插图

参考例句：

• The company's bank statements illustrate its success.这家公司的银行报表说明了它的成功。
• This diagram will illustrate what I mean.这个图表可说明我的意思。

5 byline   

n.署名；v.署名

参考例句：

• His byline was absent as well.他的署名也不见了。
• We wish to thank the author of this article which carries no byline.我们要感谢这篇文章的那位没有署名的作者。

6 rental   

n.租赁，出租，出租业

参考例句：

• The yearly rental of her house is 2400 yuan.她这房子年租金是2400元。
• We can organise car rental from Chicago O'Hare Airport.我们可以安排提供从芝加哥奥黑尔机场出发的租车服务。

7 determined   

adj.坚定的；有决心的

参考例句：

• I have determined on going to Tibet after graduation.我已决定毕业后去西藏。
• He determined to view the rooms behind the office.他决定查看一下办公室后面的房间。

8 utilize   

vt.使用，利用

参考例句：

• The cook will utilize the leftover ham bone to make soup.厨师要用吃剩的猪腿骨做汤。
• You must utilize all available resources.你必须利用一切可以得到的资源。

9 grove   

n.林子，小树林，园林

参考例句：

• On top of the hill was a grove of tall trees.山顶上一片高大的树林。
• The scent of lemons filled the grove.柠檬香味充满了小树林。

10 holders   

支持物( holder的名词复数 )； 持有者； （支票等）持有人； 支托（或握持）…之物

参考例句：

• Slaves were mercilessly ground down by slave holders. 奴隶受奴隶主的残酷压迫。
• It is recognition of compassion's part that leads the up-holders of capital punishment to accuse the abolitionists of sentimentality in being more sorry for the murderer than for his victim. 正是对怜悯的作用有了认识，才使得死刑的提倡者指控主张废除死刑的人感情用事，同情谋杀犯胜过同情受害者。

11 superintendent   

n.监督人，主管，总监；(英国)警务长

参考例句：

• He was soon promoted to the post of superintendent of Foreign Trade.他很快就被擢升为对外贸易总监。
• He decided to call the superintendent of the building.他决定给楼房管理员打电话。

12 trespass   

n./v.侵犯，闯入私人领地

参考例句：

• The fishing boat was seized for its trespass into restricted waters.渔船因非法侵入受限制水域而被扣押。
• The court sentenced him to a fine for trespass.法庭以侵害罪对他判以罚款。

13 affordable   

adj.支付得起的，不太昂贵的

参考例句：

• The rent for the four-roomed house is affordable.四居室房屋的房租付得起。
• There are few affordable apartments in big cities.在大城市中没有几所公寓是便宜的。

14 investigation   

n.调查，调查研究

参考例句：

• In an investigation,a new fact became known, which told against him.在调查中新发现了一件对他不利的事实。
• He drew the conclusion by building on his own investigation.他根据自己的调查研究作出结论。

15 twilight   

n.暮光，黄昏；暮年，晚期，衰落时期

参考例句：

• Twilight merged into darkness.夕阳的光辉融于黑暗中。
• Twilight was sweet with the smell of lilac and freshly turned earth.薄暮充满紫丁香和新翻耕的泥土的香味。

16 stereotype   

n.固定的形象，陈规，老套，旧框框

参考例句：

• He's my stereotype of a schoolteacher.他是我心目中的典型教师。
• There's always been a stereotype about successful businessmen.人们对于成功商人一直都有一种固定印象。

17 racist   

n.种族主义者，种族主义分子

参考例句：

• a series of racist attacks 一连串的种族袭击行为
• His speech presented racist ideas under the guise of nationalism. 他的讲话以民族主义为幌子宣扬种族主义思想。

18 stereotyping   

v.把…模式化，使成陈规( stereotype的现在分词 )

参考例句：

• I realize that I'm stereotyping. 我认识到我搞的是老一套。 来自辞典例句
• There is none of the gender stereotyping usually evident in school uniforms. 有没有人的性别刻板印象通常是显而易见的。 来自互联网

19 stigma   

n.耻辱，污名；(花的)柱头

参考例句：

• Being an unmarried mother used to carry a social stigma.做未婚母亲在社会上曾是不光彩的事。
• The stigma of losing weighed heavily on the team.失败的耻辱让整个队伍压力沉重。