Why There's No Sense Of Emergency, Part 2

When all you see in Washington circles is a 5% unemployment rate among college grads, you tend to miss the fact that the rest of us are hurting badly, and that the poorest Americans are in a full-blown depression in places like Georgia.

East Point housing officials began accepting Section 8 applications 90 minutes early Thursday morning after crowds of people showed up to turn in the forms.

A day after a crowd of 30,000 mobbed the housing authority offices to pick up the forms, a small crowd of less than a dozen people began lining up around 5 a.m. The group was dispersed by East Point police about an hour later. But shortly after 7 a.m., officials allowed people to line up on the sidewalk adjacent to the building. There were about 50 people in line at 7:30, when officials brought out boxes and began to accept the applications. That process had been scheduled to begin at 9 a.m. Applications will be accepted until 5:30 p.m.

30,000 people were out in the Georgia heat yesterday to pick up an application for HUD Section 8 housing.  Thirty thousand people showed up just to get an application to get onto a waiting list for a housing project apartment.

Applicants came from all over the metro area and some came from other states. Since the program is a federal program, applications are not limited to East Point residents, Lemish said.

The current process is being conducted because, while all housing units are filled, the waiting list is depleted and the current group of applicants will be put on a new waiting list. There are a total of 655 housing spots available -- 200 public housing units and 455 vouchers for rent assistance in private housing. East Point currently has five housing developments, but three of them will be closed or sold.

Lemish said it will likely be six months before any vacancies arise and that people could spend up to 10 years on the waiting list.

Section 8 housing apartments are being closed or sold all across the country because cities and counties don't have the money anymore.  Thirty thousand people showed up to get on a list for 655 spots here.  We're in the process of creating a new, permanent underclass in this country:  excruciatingly poor, uneducated, and no city, county, or state funds to help them.  It's not millions are "falling through the cracks", it's millions are "being pushed into the chasm by bulldozers".

It's going to get brutal in the next couple of years, folks.  You will see a lot more of this in the coming months, and things are going to start getting a lot less civil when it does.