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Comment by mips_r4300i | Hacker News Reader

Years ago, my dad owned and rented out some Section 8 houses in the hood. Tenants were single moms on welfare with usually 3 to 4 young kids.

Many times he'd knock on the front door after a call to fix the toilet or some such repair, be told to hang on for a sec, and a man would try to run out the back door and disappear.

This was the baby daddy (or a prospective one) being shooed out by the mom, because his presence was a risk to the single mom's welfare checks.

Hard to improve when the incentives are against it.

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For sure, the benefits cliff is a huge flaw in our social safety net. We should direct massively more resources to create a comprehensive social benefits program that covers a wide range of social strata with both goods and services, either subsidized or at-cost.

At this point, it 's more likely that we should actually just get rid of most of the social safety net and instead concentrate on severely limiting market power abuses so stuff doesn't get so insanely priced that people can't afford it.

When you have as much government as we currently have, we need to very seriously consider getting rid of government as the solution to a particular problem, rather than more government.

Government isn't sand, I don't think it's productive to talk about "more" or "less" of it. I think it's more appropriate to talk about the expense/benefit ratio of tax dollars which in the US is clearly not great. Correction to that ratio seems like it could come from lots of directions, but I don't think just cutting services and trying to prevent market monopolization is going to get you all the way there, or even kind of close. Producing "affordability" is going to require ensuring that people have access to cheap healthcare, cheap transit, cheap power, cheap delivery networks, etc. All of these are things which benefit greatly from economies of scale, and which a state can effectively (and prudently) provide. There's plenty of examples worldwide, the US is just in a Reaganite hangover.

In this case it is appropriate to talk about more or less government because you were arguing for a large expansion of government via comprehensive redistribution schemes. The problem is "producing affordability" is only from economies of scale sometimes and the situation is actually dramatically more complex because the other thing that benefits from economies of scale is market power accumulation, both public and private, which is the real driver of the expensiveness of many of the things you mention, it certainly is for healthcare, transit, and power in the US context.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claudine_(film)

> ... Throughout the film, Miss Kabak, a social worker, visits Claudine at her home and asks her if she is employed and if she is dating anyone. Claudine always claims to be unemployed and single, to make sure to get the maximum amount of benefits, which she desperately needs. If Claudine has a job or dates anyone and receives gifts from her boyfriend, the social worker has to deduct any money or gifts from her benefits, forcing Claudine to lie.

This movie was released in 1974. Though fiction, it's one of the examples used when people say that when government gets involved ($$$), it moves slow and breaks things for a long time.

I think people will always try to game/pervert a system, and unfortunately we all will have to suffer the consequences. For now.

That's not the problem though is it? I'd call it a distraction.

I know someone playing this sort of game. She's collecting benefits even though she's living with her children's father; indeed he's supporting her and the children.

Whatever I may think of this the children are in a stable 2 parent family. Other then having a mother whose ethics are (again in my view) open to question I don't think the children are any worse off then comparable children who's parents are married and not receiving any sort of assistance.

As odd as it sounds the real trouble is for children who are genuinely - being raised by a single mother - in the situation.

I was led to believe that Clinton ended "welfare as we know it" to address that sort of thing. I wonder what your preferred solution is? Because it always seems to be something to the effect of "just get rid of welfare" which seems like it might be a bit hard on the kids as well.

My solution is UBI. Ditch welfare as we know it. Ditch the requirements, and all the bureaucratic administration fees and salaries that go with them, and that would free up enough money for proper UBI.

Somehow I doubt that the WSJ has this solution in mind.

The problem with UBI is that once it's instituted, even if financial or other circumstances radically change, it will be politically suicidal to remove it. If it doesn't work well, if it's counterproductive, if anything turns out to be unworkable... tough, no politician can survive going against free money for everyone.

That's a fundamental problem with such a... generous program. I'm not even going to get into the sheer pull factor for immigration it would create, and that pull would skew towards people who are both destitute and not likely to work.

Buy Bitcoin and advocate for UBI!

Just rebrand UBI as “Social Security for All Who Want It”.

How did they get the idea that their landlord observing a guest would impact their benefits?

The anecdote doesn't imply that the tenant with the HUD vouchers believed this, it only suggests this is the interpretation that Landlord Dad promulgated to the kids around the dinner table.

It's not the landlord they were worried about. They expected visits from the housing authority who sometimes check up on the tenants.

The biggest one is when taking section 8 is you aren't allowed to have guests staying for more than 14 days.

This was off Troost in KC circa 2005.

The landlord and section 8 have to communicate about certain things, doubt they would lie for the tenant.

Is there something specific the landlord would have to communicate?

Yes, every year the landlord must "recertify" the tenant which entails listing everyone living in the rental and what their incomes are. Rent is 30% of this income minus medical expenses.

So if the landlord sees someone that the lessee identifies as a guest during a visit not related to that certification, are they (the landlord) somehow on the hook for investigating the residency status of that guest? Or can they just fix the sink and go on home?

I actually don't know the details of the landlord's obligations (besides putting info into forms, then having tenant sign the forms) but a guest is supposed to stay only a limited number of nights per year.

Yeah, I figured that was the case.

I only know a little bit second hand but I wouldn't be surprised, from what I understand each side has obligations to meet in the deal and the status can be lost on either side. Its also gonna depend on the state

Ah the old "welfare queen" trope. That's a lot of anecdotal speculation where I think the reality is probably a lot more complex in a chicken-or-the-egg type of way.

Have you ever lived in apartment complexes or neighborhoods with a lot of section 8 housing?

Lesson: Landlords look down on their tenants.

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