Maxine Waters Has Heated Exchange With Homeless Seeking Vouchers

Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., last week had a heated exchange with a crowd of homeless people in South Los Angeles who were seeking Section 8 vouchers due to a mistaken social media post, according to the Los Angeles Times.

Hundreds of people showed up at an event last Friday under the mistaken impression that vouchers for permanent, subsidized housing were going to be handed out due to a social media post with a graphic stating that the event was "giving out section 8 on Imperial and Vermont today and on Tuesdays and Wednesdays," which was not authorized by the organization behind the event or any agency that distributes these vouchers.

"Someone got issued a voucher, their baby daddy or whoever was with them, and they posted it like, 'Look, I got my voucher,' and it went viral," said Linda Kelly, the operations director of Fathers and Mothers Who Care. "Then Maxine Waters came, and it went more viral."

Monitors from the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority could not keep up with the number of people and Waters, who was at the event to deliver a speech, eventually called on the crowd to "go home" because there were "no more applications for Section 8 vouchers," according to the Los Angeles Times.

One person in the crowd reportedly yelled in response, "We don’t got no home, that’s why we’re here. What home [are] we going to go to?"

Waters said, "Excuse me, there’s nobody in Washington who works for their people any f*****g harder than I do. I don’t want to hear this. No, no, no." 

According to the LA Times, when a reporter contacted Waters about the incident, the congresswoman reportedly dismissed the events as “a bunch of rumors” and requested that the newspaper not publish the story saying that it would “hurt yourself and the community trying to put this together without background. I don’t want you to start trying to write it, you won’t understand it."

The LA Times notes that Waters’ district director, Blanca Jimenez, did not answer the detailed list of questions sent by the newspaper in an email, instead, a link to a video of a TV station’s positive coverage of the event was provided.

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