Opinion: Lancaster’s Section 8 decision
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Sarah Shankland Merlin, a homeowner in Lancaster for eight years, responds to The Times’ April 10 article, ’Lancaster proposes limiting Section 8 housing.” If you would like to respond to a recent Times article, editorial or Op-Ed in our Blowback forum, here are our FAQs and submission policy.
In the April 10 article, ‘Lancaster proposes limiting Section 8 housing,” Larry Gross, executive director of an L.A.-based tenant rights group, is quoted asserting that Lancaster is ‘putting up a sign on the borders of Lancaster saying that poor people are not welcome here.’
No, Mr. Gross. Those of us who actually live in Lancaster are praying that the city will be able somehow to put up a sign saying that if you’re a criminal, a vagrant, too lazy to get some kind of job and pay for your own housing, or worse, you’re not welcome here.
My husband and I didn’t succumb to temptation and get a house we couldn’t afford with a ridiculous adjustable-rate mortgage. We bought a house in 2001 that we actually could afford, and helped out a struggling neighborhood by improving our property. What we got in return was a never-ending string of Section 8 renters as neighbors who destroyed the homes they lived in and made our lives unbearable with their neglected pets, trash-strewn yards, domestic violence and deafening urban music at all hours.
Responding to one of the many times we called police for help curtailing the worst of the abuses, a Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department deputy looked shocked when we answered our door one night, saying, ‘You live here? If I were you, I’d move.’ Worse, the large apartment complex across the street from our house was nothing more than a safe harbor for criminals who enjoyed government-subsidized housing that made them immune from eviction. The apartment management loved those dependable rent checks and couldn’t have cared less what kind of toll its tenants were taking on the community.
For three years, one tenant regularly screamed filthy obscenities at me when I ventured into my frontyard, blasted rock music at all hours (and I, by the way, front a rock band myself -- ever been awakened by Metallica on a Sunday morning at 8, Mr. Gross) and entertained a steady stream of vehicle traffic that dropped by daily and stayed for about 10 minutes, on average. Hazard your own guess as to what those visits were about.
During a visit from another deputy, this one in response to a fight that had broken out in that apartment, an officer told us that he was sick to death of answering calls at that location; ‘I’d like to shoot the [expletive] myself,’ he said of the occupant.
My husband and I finally fled that neighborhood last fall, moving across town. Our former house will soon become just another like those around it, because we don’t care who we sell it to.
So, no, Mr. Gross, Lancaster is not opposed to helping the deserving poor. But neither is the city in a position to tolerate the status quo. Believe me, I know.