After two decades on Wall Street, you learn something fundamental: incentives matter. They shape behavior. In government, we often talk about compassion for those struggling — and I believe that impulse is genuine and necessary. But compassion without accountability becomes something else entirely. It becomes a system that means well while accidentally trapping people in the very circumstances it intended to help.

Housing vouchers solve a real problem. No argument there. The question isn’t whether people need housing — they do. The question is whether indefinite support serves them. From a fiscal standpoint, we’re spending taxpayer money on a program with no exit ramp. That’s not sustainable, and everyone knows it. But more importantly, from a human standpoint, it’s not serving the person receiving the voucher. We’re substituting permanent dependency for temporary assistance, and calling it compassion.

I’ve worked in environments where the best performers were those with skin in the game — those who knew there was an endpoint, a moment when they’d need to stand on their own. That clarity concentrates the mind. It drives effort. Time limits on housing assistance do the same thing. They create the incentive structure that says: “We’re here to help you transition, not to manage your permanent condition.”

Real upward mobility requires this framework. You don’t build self-sufficiency through indefinite subsidy. You build it through temporary support paired with clear expectations. That’s not cruel — it’s honest. It respects the recipient’s capacity to improve their circumstances, rather than treating them as permanent wards of the system. Government should be a bridge, not a permanent address.

I bet most Americans don’t know their tax dollars are supporting recipients of housing voucher’s for decades. Although needed- time to impose time limits to allow upward mobility. https://www.aei.org/op-eds/its-time-for-time-limits-on-public-housing/