HOUSING

On average, applicants for public housing nationally can expect to linger in a housing limbo of 20 months, but for people hoping to acquire Section 8 vouchers, which allow public housing clients to rent units on the open market, the wait can be substantially longer. In Chicago the average Section 8 applicant won't receive a voucher for 84 months, or seven years. In Trenton, New Jersey it's a comparable delay of 72 months, and it's 60 months in Miami. In fact, the Section 8 wait has achieved such epic status in 56 cities that local officials no longer even bother to accept new applications.

Between the coasts
"Our housing crisis is different from what's happening on the East and West coasts," says Walsh. "Our issue is not a lack of housing units; our issue is the lack of income. We started losing jobs in the '90s, and Louisville just hasn't come back. "We have the units; we just don't have folks who can afford them, and the income gap keeps getting bigger and bigger."

Kevin Clarke is a senior editor at U.S. Catholic and managing editor of online products at Claretian Publications. This article appeared in the August 2005 (Volume 70, Number 8; pages 12-17) issue of U.S. Catholic.