Housing help being lost

Toledo Blade: If the government gives a program enough trouble, sooner or later it begins to wither away.
That's what the Bush Administration is doing to Section 8, the federal housing subsidy program which gives vouchers to the poor.
The administration's cavalier and confusing treatment gives landlords little reason to stay in the program, and if they opt out, many poor Americans will have no place to go but the streets.
The proposed changes are based on a faulty formula.
The Department of Housing and Urban Development wants to reduce the amount of subsidized housing vouchers for poor residents in big cities like New York City and New England urban areas.
The formula to decrease the subsidies is based on averaging the high rent in big cities with that charged in suburban areas, where rates are usually lower.
You don't have to be a federal bureaucrat to know that averaging rent in big cities with that in suburban towns means the big city renters will lose out.
The change would force 1.9 million families to pay hundreds of dollars more on their monthly rent, money many don't have.
This move is hardly an exercise in "compassionate conservatism."