One critic of the program said it is ‘urbanizing the suburbs.’

One critic of the program said it is ‘urbanizing the suburbs.’

CINCINNATI (AP) — A federal program that helps lower-income families move into middle-class and suburban neighborhoods using rent vouchers has caused tension in some southwest Ohio communities.

Almost two-thirds of metro Cincinnati’s Section 8 housing concentrated on Hamilton County, according to a Cincinnati Enquirer analysis which also noted that western Hamilton County alone has about half of the region’s rentals. The newspaper reported the unequal relocation of poor families left many residents frustrated.

“The whole idea of deconcentrating poverty was supposed to be that you would pick up middle-class values. But all it’s doing is urbanizing the suburbs,” says Judy Hinterlong, a Colerain Township resident and a critic of the program.

Fifteen years of local and federal data showed that the number of such vouchers has doubled locally since 1994, reaching a $62 million tab last year.

Critics of the voucher program say the transplanted neighbors lower property values and add crime. Amid previously wealthy enclaves, pockets of poverty have emerged.

The program was designed to break apart large-scale public housing projects. Supporters of the program say it helps lift families out of poverty.

“Critics of Section 8 tend to put the chicken before the egg and incorrectly assume the Section 8 is causing the crime. But a lot of neighborhoods are already in decline for different reasons,” said Jessica Powell, a Legal Aid Society of Southwest Ohio lawyer who often represents public housing residents.

About 1,500 residents who used to live in such projects have used the vouchers to move out. It hasn’t come without complaint.

“A community is only as strong as its weakest link,” Colerain Township resident Valerie Heimkreiter told the Cincinnati Metropolitan Housing Authority, the agency charged with overseeing Section 8 housing in Hamilton County.

Heimkreiter said she does not want her township — which has seen its Section 8 numbers triple since 1994 — to become another high-density project.