TENANTS, HOUSING GROUPS BACK HIGH COURT'S NO-DRUGS RULING

Tenant groups and public housing officials in New Jersey are applauding a
U.S. Supreme Court ruling yesterday that allows government agencies to use
aggressive eviction policies to rid public housing of drug users and dealers.

The justices, without dissent, said they had no problem with a federal law
and related policies that permit entire families to be evicted from public
housing for drug involvement by one member.

Local housing agencies said the court's ruling only confirmed what they
have already been doing.

"This is a reminder that residents have to abide by their lease," said
Robert Graham, executive director of the Newark Housing Authority. The
agency's lease is based on federal guidelines that allow tenants to be
evicted if they, their family members or guests are involved in criminal
activity.

The Newark Housing Authority beefed up its lease after the federal
government passed the "one strike and you're out" policy in 1996, which
allowed the immediate eviction of public housing tenants engaging in drug
or criminal activity.

Graham said his agency did not track eviction based on drug involvement.
But in Paterson, 12 out of 300 families have been evicted over the past 18
months for drugs, said Irma Gorham, executive director of the Paterson
Housing Authority. With each eviction reviewed case by case, the offending
family is called in for a hearing, she said.

"Good residents we want to remain. We don't kick them out as soon as they
get a notice," Graham said.

The new aggressive eviction policies have helped public housing officials
in Paterson deal with the city's drug problem but have not eliminated it,
she said. "It has helped us change the mindset. It has helped us have a
dialogue with residents."

In Woodbridge, about five one-strike evictions were ordered over the past
two years, said Donna Brightman, executive director of the township's
housing authority, which oversees 149 public housing units and another 415
units for seniors.

"You could look at it both ways," Brightman said of the federal policy. "If
you have residents who are trying to have a decent quality of life and
people are doing drugs, to them one-strike is a benefit. It gets rid of
that element from the development." On the other hand, Brightman said,
elderly people have been held responsible for the actions of their children.

It was the cases of four elderly tenants in Oakland, Calif., who were
evicted from their apartments based on the drug activity of their relatives
that reached the Supreme Court.

One of the cases involved Pearlie Rucker, 63, whose mentally disabled
daughter was caught with cocaine three blocks from the apartment she shared
with her mother and three other family members. The Supreme Court reversed
a decision by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, thus upholding
Rucker's eviction.

Kim Williams, 30, a Newark public housing resident, said she had mixed
feelings about the justices' ruling. "It can go both ways," she said.

Williams, who lives in Baxter Terrace with her three children, said she had
no problem with evicting a tenant who knowingly allows a household member
to engage in drug activity.

But she said tenants should not be held responsible for their guests who
they may not know are involved with drugs. "What am I supposed to do,
strip-search everyone who comes through my door?"

That was exactly the part of the lease that tenants objected to when the
"one-strike" leases were first implemented, said Mary Rone, president of
the Newark Tenants Council. "That was the strongest reaction, they did not
believe they should be responsible for their visitors' actions," she said.

But over the years, tenants have come to accept the broad terms of the
lease, she said.

The Supreme Court's ruling is just what tenants have been asking for --
"stronger enforcement against drug activity in public housing," Rone said.

"The majority of people have been asking for this to help with the drug
problem. It (the court's ruling) won't be anything they can't live by," she
said.

But some critics say the law that the Supreme Court upheld is too harsh.

"The only way they can get away with it is because it affects poor people,"
said Sheila Crowley, head of the National Income Housing Coalition.

Staff writer Russell Ben-Ali and the Associated Press contributed to this
report. Reginald Roberts covers Essex County.