Molly Rockett, Private Property Managers Unchecked: The Failures of Federal Compliance Oversight in Project-Based Section 8 Housing, 134 Harv. L. Rev. 286 (2021). Introduction below:
Federally subsidized housing should be the foundation upon which much of our social safety net is built. It is supposed to be a core component of our public response to the intertwined crises of poverty and homelessness, funded by taxpayer dollars and executed by our public servants in the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), as well as by state and local officials. Yet, in so many ways, this vision is a complete falsehood. In practice, our federally subsidized housing system is impossibly pockmarked and flawed. Affordable housing programs, built on public funds, too often abuse and humiliate tenants rather than protect and provide for them. Chronic underfunding and a neoliberal obsession with oversurveilling and overpolicing tenants are toxic twin undercurrents in most of our federally subsidized programs. Decades of disinvestment coupled with punishing statutory schemes squeeze every drop of discretionary income out of tenants and create a shared experience of suffering by tenants across each of the many federally subsidized housing programs. As a result, most tenants receiving the benefit of federal subsidized housing are the victims of financial insecurity, privacy violations, poor living conditions, and an ever-present threat of eviction.
Poverty Law 