EVICTION RULE TIED TO DRUGS TO GET REVIEW

WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court will decide if families can be evicted from
public housing because of one member's drug use.

Critics of the government's zero-tolerance policy say unwitting older people
suffer the most, often being forced out of their subsidized housing because
of trouble-making relatives.

The Supreme Court agreed Tuesday to review the national
one-strike-and-you're-out rule in a case involving four elderly California
public-housing residents ordered to move.

The Bush administration had asked justices to overturn an appeals court's
ruling that the policy is needlessly harsh. The ruling by the 9th U.S.
Circuit Court of Appeals made the policy unenforceable in the nine states
plus Guam covered by the California-based court.

We're concerned that the case is being heard at a time that the mood of the
country conceivably is to relax civil liberties," said Catherine Bishop, a
policy opponent and attorney for the National Housing Law Project. "You
sweep up innocent individuals in your zeal to stop crime."

San Francisco attorney Gary Lafayette, who represents the Oakland Housing
Authority, said housing leaders are responsible for keeping projects safe,
and "without the one strike, it may become more difficult to address the
issues of gangs and criminal activity."