(this is an American thing, but anyone else who has knowledge of it is of course free to respond) This occurred to me: in recent years, I've occasionally read articles in the news about food-stamp fraud; if an individual person is given food stamps, it's meant solely for that person's use, otherwise it's a matter of defrauding the government. Question: would the same be true for housing programs? I'm specifically referring to programs that provide housing for homeless persons. When these individuals move other people in, would that be considered fraud? In my opinion, the agencies that provide the housing and knowingly allow their tenants to move other people in are defrauding the government (as it's a HUD program), which also comes to misusing our tax dollars. Looking for input. Thanks!
This kind of thing has been happening for maybe the last 50+ years, @Joanna Newton ; so apparently, it is not something that the government gets very concerned about. Back in the early 1960’s, (and before) when there were a lot of single mothers on welfare, many of them moved in a boyfriend (who often held a job, but sometimes just mooched), and it was pretty much ignored by the authorities. I went to church with two families, both of the husbands worked part time in the logging industry, and were out of work all winter. Both families had 5 children. One couple was married, and the other couple had just lived together for many years, and the wife got welfare and food stamps for herself and her 5 children. The married couple received nothing, because they counted the husband’s earnings, even though he only worked seasonally. The whole thing seemed really unfair to me, but that is how the laws work. However, if a person sells their EBT allowance, then it is definitely considered a crime, maybe for both parties, the seller and the buyer; so if someone had a housing voucher and then rented out a room to another person, that would probably be considered a crime, too.
Thanks for your input, Yvonne! The program I'm referring to was previously called Shelter Plus Care, now is Housing First. One local agency sends most tenants. Not only do some tenants move boyfriends in (too often resulting in domestic-abuse situations) they also move in quantities of street people. Their caseworkers are aware of this, and so are the main staff members, but they refuse to do anything. The programs are supposed to provide housing to individual tenants- formerly homeless persons- not tenants and however many other people they move on in with them. In THIS area the main cause of homelessness is drugs- so you can imagine what's going on.
When I had a rental property, I had tenents under this program and I thought how well it worked because rent was always paid on time. I wondered why some landlords did not like it. But apparently it led to destruction of property and multiple families etc. That makes it harder for people in need to get housing under the program because renters are more wary.
Well, the reasons it's bad here is a) the tenants use drugs, and b) they move street people into their apartments. It's resulted in a lot of crime, and dangerous situations. Glad to hear it worked well for you, though!!!