MUST BE NICE: ‘Lap of luxury:’ Section 8 covers Colorado rents up to $3,879 per month.

“Section 8 needs to focus on lifting people out of the trap of poverty, not putting them into the lap of luxury,” said National Taxpayers Union president Pete Sepp in an interview with The Center Square. “It’s unfair to ask taxpayers who can’t afford mortgages or rents of nearly $4,000 per month to foot the bill for subsidies amounting to that much.”

HCV recipients remain in the program for an average of 15.1 years – that’s up from an average of 12.4 years in 2000, according to a 2024 federal report.

When asked about a 2026 budget proposal from the Trump administration that would limit Section 8 assistance to two years, U.S. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Scott Turner recounted his meeting with a recipient whose family had been housed by the program for multiple generations.

“She’s 52 years old, she’s been living there since 1973. She’s able-bodied, able-minded. She was raised there. She lived there. Now she’s raising her children there,” Turner said in a video his office posted to X on August 25, recounting a meeting with a multi-generational federal housing recipient. “That’s three generations living on government subsidies that are able bodied, able minded.”

And able to do it, which boggles the mind.