HERE’S WHY GOVERNMENT HOUSING VOUCHERS CAUSE MORE POVERTY, NOT LESS: Question – Which program does the federal government spend more on each year, public housing vouchers or welfare checks? If you said the former, you must know the Manhattan Institute’s Howard Husock. What he knows about public housing is more valuable than the work of the 10 smartest people on the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s bloated payroll.

“Its incentives are completely skewed,” Husock, vice president for policy research and director of the Social Entrepreneurship Initiative at Manhattan, told The Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group’s Katie Watson.

“You’ve ‘hit the lottery’ and you’re set for life. Not only do you hit the lottery and you can sit back and have a housing unit for life, but, remember, your deal is you pay 30 percent of your income in rent, but what it means is for every additional dollar you earn, you pay an addition 30 cents in rent,” he said.

The voucher concept is grounded in common sense, but it somehow got corrupted when HUD applied it to the public housing arena. Husock explains in straightforward terms why the way HUD does vouchers ends up encouraging the very traits most likely to produce poverty in an individual’s life.