Section 8 Housing

Incredible!! Journal story- June 24- City Council didn't know that the Voucher program had increased from 2.47 mils to 9.64 mils in eight years. Didn't know that some city staff members were applying for additional vouchers that eventually increased the Section 8 program to the overabundance of housing that we have today. Wouldn't the city finance people have noticed this increase and brought it to someone's attention? Wasn't someone representing the city, monitoring this program over these eight years and reporting to council the status? Didn't Council, when reviewing the budget/services/costs for the city notice this?What are they doing in that big building downtown?Asleep at the wheel, are they? If they don't audit now, this is the time to develop an audit program, at least every other year, to examine the details of each department within the city government as to manpower, costs and programs within each department for feasibility/application/performance of all programs/personnel. Schiavone, 15 year veteran of Council, had no clue that this was occurring. Apparently, all of the other councilmembers were clueless also. Hum, awareness-wonder what's going on in this city- perhaps the city leaders could learn what it means and practice it. That would be something new from city leaders!The story didn't mention what the city plans to do to REDUCE the number of vouchers and lessen Section 8 in Middletown.

All that is necessary for section 8 housing to triumph disproportionately in Middletown is that good council members to do nothing - Edmund 308 Burk

Look for section 8 to remain as is.

The increases were signed off within the city(possibly by Mr.Koehler?) with Council probably not paying attention or being propely notified(as noted by Mr. Schiavone's comments at the last Council meeting).

I have to agree with you on Section 8.  Current Council or at least the majority of them have no vision of improvement just the status quo and everyone else sit down and shutup.  As far as who increased Section 8 my money was on Koehler all along just didn't know for sure.  Personally I would have fired Koehler long ago, he also is stuck in reverse and has way to much power and does not always use it to the advantage of the city as a whole.

Another possible benefit of drastically reducing Section 8 housing is that the City can reassign the Police Officer that they have assigned to HUD for the Projects.

This program should be transferred out of the City as the City Manager recommends.  Council in particular Marconi should let this go.  Taking away the title of being the Section 8 Capital of Butler County is a good start.  City Council please heed what the City Manager is recommending.

 

From the City Managers Report

 

In otherwords nothing will be changing.  Middletown will continue to be the Mecca for Low Income families to move to because they have a better chance of getting a Section 8 Voucher here than in the County. 

Arwendt I don't think they would understand the point it was trying to make.  Unfortunately for Middletown......improvement is not in their vocabulary.