Curbing Section 8 harassment

Officials in the Antelope Valley cities of Lancaster and Palmdale have been under fire for months for allegedly harassing minority residents who receive public housing assistance. A civil rights lawsuit filed last June accused authorities of trying to drive blacks and Latinos who hold Section 8 vouchers out of the area through overzealous inspections of homes by housing officials and sheriff’s deputies. In many cases, according to the plaintiffs’ lawyers, inspectors would search for violations of Section 8 rules or criminal activity even though no complaint had been made.

Now, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors has approved measures designed to thwart any such harassment. In a closed session Tuesday night, the board agreed to stop funding extra housing investigators for the two cities; critics had argued that the investigators’ main role was to target minority Section 8 residents and terminate their housing privileges. Investigators will no longer be able to take armed sheriff’s deputies with them on compliance checks unless there is a documented threat to the investigator’s safety. And the county housing authority will no longer routinely provide names and addresses of Section 8 residents and their landlords to municipal and law enforcement agencies simply because they ask for them.

The measures still must be approved by a court. Whatever the outcome of the lawsuit against the two cities, these are smart and serious steps to combat what appeared to be troubling practices.

Lancaster and Palmdale, with a surplus of affordable housing, have drawn more Section 8 residents than any other community under county housing control. Lancaster Mayor R. Rex Parris, who has argued that the influx of residents on housing assistance has burdened city services — a problem he would have no matter how fully those residents complied with Section 8 rules — strongly denounced the new measures, saying the move sends the message “that committing housing fraud is acceptable.”

Of course, fraud in the Section 8 voucher program should not be tolerated. And in fact, most of the terminations of vouchers in the Antelope Valley for violations of the regulations have been upheld. But Section 8 regulations are extremely strict and easily violated. Allowing a visitor to stay one day longer than permitted is a violation, for example.

We are not suggesting that Section 8 voucher holders be allowed to ignore even the most innocuous of rules. But we do support the new guidelines aimed at preventing intimidating inspections in Lancaster and Palmdale that surpass the level of scrutiny elsewhere in the county.