EVICTION LAW GOES TOO FAR

Only the hardest of hearts could fail to be touched by the plight of
elderly public housing tenants who now face eviction because, without their
knowledge, family members used drugs. It's a cruel law that threatens to
put Willie Lee, 75 and disabled, on the streets of Oakland because her
grandson smoked pot in the project's parking lot. And who can defend making
a homeless man of Herman Walker, 78, a stroke victim whose in-home
caretaker - not even a relative - was found with drug paraphernalia?

These and others may lose their homes in the aftermath of a unanimous
Supreme Court ruling Tuesday. But the fault here does not lie with the
court, whose succinct, 10-page ruling clearly followed both the law and
congressional intent in reversing the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals'
generous reinterpretation of both legislative history and legal precedent.

The responsibility for rewriting ill-conceived laws lies with Congress,
which, the court demonstrated, knew exactly what it was doing when it
incorporated the eviction procedure in a 1988 public housing bill. In its
pursuit of zero drug tolerance at any cost, the law it wrote encouraged -
but did not demand - eviction as the "first-strike" penalty for such
"no-fault" violations. But to emphasize that tough-love potential,
then-President Bill Clinton in 1996 ordered firmer enforcement throughout
HUD's 3,200 housing authorities.

Thus the fate that faces Lee, Walker and any number of other aged, poor
people among the 1.2 million families living in public dwellings.

If they are to have any hope - and the compounded problems of drug abuse
and public housing needs are to have any humane solution - then it is up to
Congress and the Bush administration to leaven this overly punitive law
with a measure of compassion for innocents caught in its too-broad snare.