A STRIKE AGAINST IT

Let's stipulate that drug use and commerce is corrosive, to young lives and
to the health of neighborhoods. And further, that government officials
ought to be tough on chronic bad actors whose choices turn public housing
developments into drug markets, police magnets and places of fear. Living
in publicly financed housing is a privilege, and those who would wreck the
neighborhood merit no more fellowship than a swift kick.

That said, the so-called "one strike, you're out" rule can be taken too
far. The 1988 law allows local housing authorities to write leases giving
them the power to evict families if one member or a guest is caught with
drugs even once. The U.S. Supreme Court recently upheld the measure in a
case from Oakland, Calif. Close to home, more than 100 Durham and 37
Raleigh families have been evicted from public housing using the rule since
1999.

Yet there is a potential for unfairness, when families are shoved out even
if they genuinely didn't know -- and reasonably couldn't have been expected
to know -- that one of their members or somebody they were hosting was
involved in drug crime. That's what happened in the Oakland case, where
several people were evicted, including Pearlie Rucker, 63, a
great-grandmother whose mentally disabled daughter was arrested near their
apartment complex on cocaine charges.

A Raleigh woman complains of similar treatment three years ago after her
son and grandson were arrested blocks away from her Halifax Court apartment
on drug charges. She took her son off the lease. But officials evicted her
anyway for missing a rent payment, a strategy that officials say they use
against problem tenants.

Michael Stegman, a UNC-Chapel Hill administrator and former federal housing
official, calls the Oakland case a worse-case scenario. That is exactly the
point, illustrating how the law can result in gross unfairness. So it's
important that local authorities not be reluctant to exercise their
prerogative to let a tenant offer his or her side of the story. If tenants
can show that they couldn't have been expected to know about any illegal
drug activity, they should be able to avoid eviction in that instance.
After that, at least they would have been given fair warning.