'ONE STRIKE' KICKED OUT OF PUBLIC HOUSING

WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court has upheld a controversial federal policy
that allows public housing officials to evict entire families when a family
member - even a teen-age child - is caught with illegal drugs in or near
the housing complex. And you know what? I'm glad.

No, I'm not glad that Pearlie Rucker, a 63-year-old great grandmother, was
threatened with eviction by the Oakland Housing Authority because her adult
son and her mentally disabled daughter were caught with cocaine in separate
incidents several blocks from their home.

That was too rough a decision, and I've been told that, following last
Tuesday's ruling, the OHA is reconsidering.

But I'm glad the housing authorities still have that weapon in their
arsenal. You might be, too, if you can get past the awfulness of having
poor helpless grandmothers tossed out of their homes and remember why the
rule was introduced in the first place.

It was at a time when drug dealers and gangbangers were turning public
housing complexes into virtual crime bazaars. The noncriminal majority of
residents found their lives turned upside down by neighbors - and
neighbors' children - who were using and selling drugs, either from
individual apartments or on the grounds. What to do about it?

As the law then stood, unless the person in whose name the apartment was
leased was caught red-handed, he or she had only to plead ignorance to the
illegal activity.

I had no idea my son was using drugs, no idea my boyfriend and his cousin
were dealing out of the building, no idea ... of anything. But soon,
leaders in the public housing tenant-management move-ment got sick of it,
and people like the late Kimi Gray of Washington and Bertha Gilkey of St.
Louis started pressing federal officials to give them the leeway to
pressure tenants to shape up or face eviction.

One result was sterner screening standards for new tenants. Another was
the right to award (with choicer units) residents who kept their places up
and their children under control. A third was the so-called "One Strike"
policy that Pearlie Rucker and others fought all the way to the Supreme
Court, where they lost last week.

Sign An Agreement

Under "One Strike," tenants have to sign a lease that includes an agreement
to keep their public housing premises free of drug-related and other
criminal activity.

The implication is that they know, or should know, what is going on in
their homes - and if they don't, the threat of being suddenly homeless
should be enough to pique their curiosity.

Nor would it be enough under the policy simply to move the criminal
activity outside the apartment - or even just outside the grounds. Drug
dealing by a member of a resident's household near the complex could still
result in eviction.

Could. The eviction is permitted but not required, which is why the
handling of the particular case of Pearlie Rucker seemed unnecessarily
ham-handed. A rule requiring proof of knowledge would do nothing to stop
the descent into chaos that marks so many public housing complexes.

A rule requiring eviction under any and every circumstance of family-member
involvement with criminality would be just another example of "zero
tolerance" gone mad.

The inflexibility of crack cocaine enforcement has America's prisons
bursting at the seams, with very little positive to show for it. People
have to be free to make judgments based on a totality of circumstances -
even with a presumption of knowledge.

A Stern Warning

Based on what I've read of the Rucker case and some others in the suit, a
stern warning would have made a lot more sense than summary eviction. But
I understand, too, the fragility of poor communities, and their special
vulnerability to the predations of a relative handful of miscreants.

There are public housing and other low-income communities where ordinary
residents dare not enjoy the spring breeze or allow their children to play
on the grounds because the criminal element has taken over. It really
comes down to a choice between a liberal interpretation of the civil
liberties of those affected by "One Strike" and enforcing at least the
possibility of a safe community for those willing to live by the rules.

Having seen both the devastation wreaked by the gangbangers and the hopeful
patience of poor families on the long waiting lists for public housing, I
choose "One Strike." Sensibly enforced, of course. Grandma Pearlie doesn't
need to be on the street.