Candidate Debate on Section 8

Section 8 Housing Reform

I’m writing to clarify my position on HUD’s Section 8 Voucher Program.  As many of you know, over the last few years Council expanded the program.  Each year through the grant writing process, Council asked for more vouchers and the money followed.  Now that we have expanded the program, we cannot send the money back.  No one can reasonable argue that we can send the program back to Washington, D.C. or that we can give it to Butler County—it doesn’t work that way.  Once a municipality has planned for expansion and asked for funds, approved section 8 landlords, and taken administrative dollars, we must administer the program.  Also, once landlords are approved locally, even if the program were administered by Butler County or a housing consortium, we would still have all section 8 homes concentrated here. So we must take control of the housing program and reform our approach. 

Admittedly, my comments seemed optimistic about HUD.  But let me explain.  As a professional grant writer, I see HUD as a tremendous source of federal funding for our city.  In fact, without HUD we would have no community development dollars (CDGB grants), no funds for housing construction, rehabilitation, demolition, or economic development. Without HUD funding our city would be bankrupt.  What I intended to say, before my time expired, was that I want to help us raise money and work to find additional dollars for the city.  For example, HUD provides grants which would help us restore the Manchester Building, improve road construction, façade renovation for blighted buildings, and dollars for improving the city’s image.  HUD is a much broader source of federal funding than the Section 8 voucher program. 

In short, my intention was to explain how to use HUD as a source of funding for economic development dollars—not as an expansion of the Section 8 Voucher Program.  So let me be clear: No more Section 8 vouchers for Middletown. It's that simple. If you have any questions for me regarding HUD's Section 8 Voucher Program let me know. I value your opinion and want to make certain that I have given no wrong impressions. For more than 8 months, I've argued against the Section 8 Program and its wreckless expansion. I want to improve our city's image, strengthen public safety, and help create jobs and economic development. Please review my full record as a candidate and consider me for Council.

Respectfully,

Todd Moore

Middletown City Council Candidate, At-large

votetoddmoore.com

facebook.com/votetoddmoore

Mr. Moore...

With all due respect, I will disagree with you on the need to use HUD money in this town, welcoming gov. fed money and inviting major fed help for our city revenue. I want to see LESS reliance on fed money, LESS Section 8 intrusion on this town, and MORE emphasis on this city pulling it's head out of it's a-- and implementing a serious program for job attraction, which will create more corporate and payroll taxes, which will be a substitute for the dam fed money now used for the city's revenue. When you accept fed money, you do it for a price. The price paid by this city is our low income, ghetto reputation, higher concentrated crime and we are forced to take as many Section 8 as HUD has forced upon us. This is a high price to pay, dragging the city through the mud for decades, just to have operational money in lieu of income from jobs. I want the feds to go away, I want the city to stand by itself for a change and I want to see this town help itself instead of looking for handouts all the time. The way it is being run now is disgusting IMO. Time to reduce the section 8, legally, and take the voucher number down to coincide with out city population....at last count approx. 700 in number max. You will meet resistance from the Picards and MMF people. They have friends who are section 8 recipient landlords and are benefiting from this program. That's another reason why Picard and those like him must go......now. They are self-indulgent at the expense of the welfare of this city.

Mr. Moore...

Bottom line...

I want as much section 8, HUD ghetto, slum landlord people out of my hometown as is possible. I want the city to be less reliant on government programs and I want to feds to shove their money..... and I want this city to be employed with decent paying jobs as soon as possible. I want to see some job creation action out of the, to date, seemingly worthless econ. devel. dept. and I want a new council with a new agenda seated asap who will adopt a totally different direction than the road we have been traveling down the last 25 years. I'm sick of the crap laid on the people by the control of a few people in this town. I'm sick of this city manager and her little posse who have absolutely ruined this frikkin' city. After the new council is seated, and we have diluted the MMF stranglehold on the city, I want to see as a primary objective for the new council, the termination of the city manager and certain director level people in the city building. That's my frustration about the whole chain of events that have occurred in the last 30+ years.

I will rephrase the comment ...we are forced to take as many Section 8 (vouchers) as HUD has forced upon us." Should have read....the general population of this city are forced to endure as many section 8 people as the city leaders volunteered us for, without a voice in any resistance to the idea, resulting in making this city less desirable to live in, increasing the crime rate, lowering our property values, straining our police resources and making Middletown the low income, ghetto capital of SW Ohio. The current city leaders who agreed to this, as well as past leaders, have no class, character nor scruples in regard to the decisions made concerning this topic and as Mulligan once said, they need to leave this town as they have severely damaged it with their actions. Mulligan and others, have been around here as long as I have and they should be ashamed of themselves for what they have done to this town.   

gs, John Boehner would have no influence in the city affair and more importantly, the city doesn't really want to diminish the vouchers. Look at the fed funding as Mr. Moore eluded. It gives Doug Adkins his job as Community Revitalization Director, while living in Mason, all the while crashing Middletown's reputation by % of poverty, and doing all possible to get more funding to exploiting economic plight.

Acclaro,

Ms. Moon I appauld your time and focus on looking at the talking points I on the other hand can only say it starts at the local level (Most of the time).  If the Feds continue to offer OUR money to the states and down the line I am one that believes you cut the head off the beast.  Acclaro all I can say is I'm stiil a believer in making phone calls and calling out OUR elected officials.  It's just I dream but thats all I know when working with our system at this time. 

Its plain and simple.Section 8 housing is just no good for Middletucky.If its a must they need to hire more investigators to go in and make sure the people are going by the law.

Vet, for the most part I thought it went well.

Oops! See a line got cut off on my post. I meant to say in the fair chance part that they each got hushed when they reached 60 seconds and they each had a chance to have first shot at answering a question, but I accidentally deleted those parts!