JUDGES SKEPTICAL OF EVICTION RULE

Two days after Angela Johnson moved into Stockton's Conway Homes housing
project, a drug-related drive-by shooting shattered the peace in which she
hoped to raise her 6-year-old daughter.

But soon after that 1999 incident, Johnson said, the San Joaquin County
Housing Authority, the federally funded agency that owns Conway Homes,
moved to evict a tenant connected with the shooting. The agency applied a
rule enabling it to evict tenants involved in or connected to drug activities.

"Because of that rule, me and my daughter didn't have to suffer anymore,"
Johnson, 39, said of the fear they felt after the shooting. Housing
Authority officials, she said, "have that rule to keep control."

But the rule may not stand much longer if skepticism exhibited Wednesday in
San Francisco by a panel of federal judges hearing arguments in a closely
watched case indicates how they will rule. An 11-member panel of the 9th
U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals showed contempt for the Department of Housing
and Urban Development regulation, based on a 1988 federal law.

The law says drug-related crimes on or near public-housing property by a
tenant, a household member or a "guest or other person under the tenant's
control" are grounds for eviction. It is controversial because it allows
the eviction of tenants for their family members' drug activities even if
the tenant was unaware of such activities.

In 1998, in one of the first rulings in the nation against the regulation,
a U.S. district judge barred the Oakland Housing Authority from evicting
four tenants. Evictions of "innocent" tenants did not appear to be
authorized by federal law and would not discourage drug crimes, the judge
ruled.

In that case, one evicted 63-year-old woman's daughter allegedly was in
possession of cocaine three blocks from their apartment, without her
mother's knowledge. Two tenants, ages 71 and 63, had grandsons who lived
with them and allegedly were found with marijuana in a parking lot.

The fourth tenant was a 75-year-old disabled man whose caregiver allegedly
had cocaine in the apartment. The tenant was given notice twice of the drug
activity.

A three-judge panel of the same circuit voted 2-1 in favor of the eviction
policy, but the court abandoned that decision last month and called for a
hearing with a full panel of judges.

On Wednesday, Judge Stephen Reinhardt was dismayed over HUD's policy of
allowing evictions even if a family member or guest smoked marijuana in
"Yankee Stadium" and then went to the tenant's home.

"Is that a reason to evict grandmas?" Reinhardt asked.

Government attorney Howard Scher said such an eviction was plausible.

Judge Ronald M. Gould asked if a disabled tenant whose caregiver smoked
marijuana in the parking lot could be evicted under the law.

Scher replied in the affirmative.

"Congress gave a pretty broad tool here," he said. "There is no
innocent-tenant defense afforded."

Other judges asked similar questions and appeared troubled with the
government's position that tenants could be evicted even if they had no
knowledge of the drug activity.

Richard Oliver, a lawyer with California Rural Legal Assistance in
Stockton, said the judges should be skeptical.

"That is harsh and ridiculous," Oliver said of the eviction policy. "You
don't punish a whole family for the acts of one person. ... It can be a
disaster for the family to lose that kind of housing, especially for large
families."

But such evictions don't appear to have been a major issue for tenants of
this county's Housing Authority, Oliver added. His office has handled less
than a dozen such cases in a decade, and the Housing Authority in some of
these cases has agreed to sanctions short of eviction, he said.

Housing Authority Executive Director Antonio Pizano said the agency strives
to keep people in homes and to keep those homes free of drug activity. The
agency listens when tenants claim they did not know about drug activities.

"I don't remember any case in which it was a total surprise for everyone,
and we were very hard-nosed, and we didn't even want to hear any excuses,"
Pizano said. The agency, for example, required one family to participate in
a drug-treatment program in lieu of being evicted, he said.

But neither Pizano nor Johnson, the Conway Homes tenant, wants the court to
strike down the law. As long as there's some flexibility for handling
tenants on case by case, the law sets an appropriately high standard, they
said.

"The message has to be clear and strong. And it has to be real," Pizano
said. "I want to feel safe in my neighborhood. Why shouldn't the residents
of public housing enjoy the same benefit?"

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

To reach reporter Dogen Hannah, phone 546-8273 or e-mail dhannah@recordnet.com