DON'T EVICT THE INNOCENT

The casualties of war usually include innocent civilians. The war on drugs
is no exception. In most wars, however, the generals make (or should make)
a determined effort to minimize the loss of civilian life. Astonishingly,
Mayor Tom Murphy and Pittsburgh Housing Authority Director Stanley Lowe,
the generals of Pittsburgh's war on drugs in public housing, are fighting
for the right to attack innocent civilians.

Murphy and Lowe this week chided Legal Services lawyers and the courts for
preventing the city from being able to evict criminals and drug dealers
from publicly assisted (often called Section 8) housing. In fact, however,
the city's legal war is being waged not against the young men who committed
crimes or used drugs, but against their families, who are innocent of
wrongdoing.

Government officials already have the authority to evict from public or
Section 8 housing people who use drugs or commit violent crimes. For
instance, in the two court cases Murphy and Lowe have railed against this
week, the criminal wrongdoers have been punished and can be excluded from
the premises. But that's not enough for the drug warriors.

Murphy and Lowe want a more powerful weapon to fight the war on drugs. The
weapon they want is the authority to evict the innocent family members of
people charged with crimes. In the two controversial cases, Murphy and Lowe
want to evict two mothers and their two young children. These family
members did not commit a crime, did not know that their sons (or brothers)
were committing a crime, and could not reasonably have prevented the
crimes. One of the cases involved a 22-year-old son who didn't even live in
the mother's house! In every way, the family members are innocent.

Even the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, which demands
that local housing authorities apply a zero-tolerance drug policy,
recognizes the need "to handle these cases on an individualized basis. . .
. In particular, when a tenant has taken all reasonable steps to prevent
the criminal activity, eviction may not always be warranted or proper. To
ensure both humane results and success in court, housing authorities should
undertake a case-by-case analysis before proceeding with eviction." The two
cases being fought by Murphy and Lowe fit squarely into this exception.

The issue is not whether the government should take steps to ensure a
secure living environment. Everyone agrees that providing safety for public
housing residents is vitally important. People living outside the public
housing context expect no less from their municipal officials and police
departments. Less well-to-do people are entitled to the same consideration.

Rather, the dispute is over what means are justified to achieve public
safety. Murphy and Lowe want to be able to evict people innocent of any
wrongdoing in order to fight crime and drugs. In civil liberties parlance,
this is guilt by association, a concept rejected by most Americans. Will
this tactic advance the war on drugs? Perhaps, but at what cost?

The immediate goal of the Murphy/Lowe legal battle is to evict two mothers
and two children, ages 9-15, all of whom are blameless. If the city is
successful in establishing a right to evict the harmless family members of
people charged with crimes, more innocent people will undoubtedly be put on
the streets.

Presumably, Murphy and Lowe would argue that parents can and must be
responsible for the sins of their children. This attitude naively believes
that parents can always prevent wrongdoing by their children. In some
cases, perhaps they can. But in others, especially where it is a first
transgression, the parents may truly be helpless. Murphy and Lowe would
say, tough luck.

On the other hand, it would be political suicide for any government
official to suggest that this same strict standard should be applied to
parents in privately owned homes. We don't take away people's necessities,
including housing, if their children stray. We use the criminal justice and
social service support systems to work with the offender. Why are we as a
society willing to condone a stricter standard for the poor than we are for
everyone else?

Just as we would never stand for the slaughter of innocent civilians by
American soldiers during wartime, doing so in the war on drugs should be
equally repugnant to us. The innocent people targeted for eviction by the
housing authority, and the 1,680 people on Section 8 waiting lists that
Mayor Murphy wants to hold up until he gets his way, have done no wrong.
They deserve no punishment, certainly not the loss of housing.

Witold Walczak is executive director of the Greater Pittsburgh Chapter of
the American Civil Liberties Union.