On a visit to a park just outside of Juno, Alaska, we noticed a sign with this inscription, “A fed bear is a dead bear.” We asked the ranger why that was so and he explained that it changes the bear’s nature and habits so that it can no longer survive in nature and becomes aggressive.
Pleasant View City council and mayor just approved a government-subsidized housing project on Highway 89 just north of M&M Storage facility. This required some changing of City law to accommodate this system, which began in 1937 under the rule of Franklin D. Roosevelt and has been changed and modified and is now known as Section 8 of the Housing and Urban Development Act. At first, the stated purpose of the system was to provide housing that was not below living standard, but then in 1974 the law was changed so that quality of the housing was not the issue but the cost of housing as related to personal income became the criteria.
Now the system is saying that if a person wants to live in a nicer home than he/she can afford, the taxpayer will pay part of the rent and utilities. And in addition, the tax payer will also give the subsidized housing developer special tax advantages over the developer who depends entirely on the private and free market sales and rentals. This system opens the door to arbitrary and unjust laws and practices. It gives federal government the power to say who gets help with housing costs and who does not. They make the argument that it is not arbitrary and not unjust because they say it is a free gift to a group or class not to an individual. The government authority makes the definition of who will pay and who will receive. In this case, the developer, Mr. Kurt Peterson, makes the assertion that the facilities they will develop are enjoying amenities that many home buyers cannot afford such as granite counter tops and cutting-edge construction. That is not to say that Pleasant View City officials or Mr. Kurt Peterson, the developer in this case, are in any way illegal—they are very efficient in complying with the multitude of legal requirements of the system. Many who cannot afford granite counter tops will be paying for the government expenses going to the residents and developers of this addition in Pleasant View.
The way the system is organized, the lower income people will pay a smaller portion of their rent and utilities and the government will pay a larger portion than would be the case if the personal income were higher. The incentive to the renter/buyer is to keep the income low or to hide it. In some cases, the government payments still continue even if the personal income increases. An incentive for the developer is that he receives special tax advantages not available to the other developers in the community who market to the self-sustaining segment of the population. Justice requires the question of who gets help in housing and who does not. The fact is, there is never a line drawn where someone cannot say, “How come he gets help and I do not?” That line designated by a government authority is always arbitrary.
The burgeoning cost of maintaining the Housing and Urban Development bureaucracy and the public housing agencies attached to it, in addition to payments to renters and developers, is just one of the programs and practices that are causing the federal debt to grow at an unbelievable speed. The long-term consequences of supplying citizens with housing they cannot afford must have the same effect on them as does feeding the bears, causing them to be more dependent. Probably the degradation of the moral component of our society is more destructive in the long run than the heavy burden placed on those who are endeavoring to be self-sustaining. The system degrades both those who pay the taxes and those who are taking out of the public treasury. Would not a person have more self-respect if they know they are paying for their own housing even if it was not so luxurious? And would not a developer have more self-respect if he knows that he was succeeding while in competition with other developers who are on an equal basis rather than on a system that distorts the true free market? And would not a taxpayer have more self-respect if he was not being forced to pay for government charity but had the tax money still in his own pocket to extend his own charitable donations as he determined by himself of who was truly in need? A system that fosters debt is not for freedom. Where freedom is not, there is slavery. That’s degradation.
