When a culture is healthy, with a decent level of credibility, affluent people are honored in their integrity and purpose by grasping the struggle of the impoverished and what they can do to raise up those who struggle to exist in poverty. Assuredly, this is a challenge.  The affluent and the middle class who have not lived in poverty can intellectually understand poverty’s mechanics—such as data, income thresholds and systemic causes—but they cannot fully grasp the lived, visceral experience of constant financial scarcity. The daily emotional and psychological toll of the impoverished requires firsthand experience, which is difficult for the financially secure to conceptualize.

The ceaseless cycle of grinding poverty leaves no option but to reside in a government-funded apartment. While this ostensibly appears acceptable, Alvin Chang, in 2017, penned a comprehensive paper which includes the following conclusion: “As it turns out, living in poor neighborhoods isn’t just an inconvenience. Research shows it’s like breathing in bad air; the more you’re exposed to it, the more it hurts you. Exposure to a poor environments was like breathing in polluted air. The longer you did it, the worse it was.” The distressing and traumatic environment physiologically changes the brain to be less happy, less hopeful, and less healthy.

Hope is on the horizon when a poverty-stricken individual is granted a section eight housing voucher. This document provides the opportunity to seek a decent, safe, respectable place to live. The landlord or property management company is assured of a monthly rental check, which is not always the scenario when an apartment is rented by an individual. Ought to be a no-brainer, right? 

Notwithstanding, the quantity of single-property landlords and property management companies, specifically REI Management, who choose not to accept a Section Eight housing voucher is staggering. To be eligible for a voucher, a routine inspection is provided by HRDC, verifying livability, which perhaps is a catalyst for nonacceptance of the voucher.  A circumspect individual would ponder what landlords are attempting to hide in not allowing their property to be inspected.   

The solution to such arrogant audacity is to institute legislative action which would require that all landlords and property managers accept the section eight housing voucher. In so doing, a measure of justice and equality will be rendered to the impoverished.   

Donna graduated magna cum laude from University of Wisconsin Stevens Point, and presently engages in grassroots activity to bring moral, ethical justice to southwest Montana.