Pamela Price told the Los Angeles Times that "this is like Christmas" after she used her new Section 8 certificate to move into a luxurious apartment complex with a heated swimming pool, four spas, six tennis courts, and two air-conditioned racquetball courts.

HUD also financed apartments with market values of up to $500,000 each in La Jolla, California, a super-rich suburb of San Diego, with lavish furnishings and panoramic 180-degree views of the Pacific ocean. HUD then placed twenty-eight welfare-recipient families with incomes as high as $34,000 in the units under Section 8. Even some local activists recognized that the project would spark great resentment among taxpayers who could only dream about such housing. Mel Shapiro of San Diego told one newspaper, "I'm a housing advocate, but I'm not an idiot."

HUD Secretary Henry Cisneros, on the other hand, is pushing to expand the program, calling Section 8 "a wonderful mechanism because it gives people tremendous choice and mobility."

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