WOULD-BE TENANTS CAN'T RENT UNTIL PASSING DRUG TEST

Bryn Mawr Residents Checked Every Year In Order To Keep Building Safe.

CHICAGO (AP) -- The way Charles Poole remembers it, the Bryn Mawr apartments
used to be a full-service building -- if the services you were looking for
involved drugs and prostitutes.

Outside its doors was what amounted to an open-air drug store. And inside,
right behind the front desk, one woman ran her own little side business,
finding customers dope and hookers.

These days, the 79-year-old Poole says he sees none of that. And a big
reason, he says, is the test for illegal drugs like cocaine and marijuana
that everybody -- from teen-agers right up to a white-haired retired
accountant who needs a cane to get around -- must pass before they're
allowed to move into the building and keep passing once a year to stay.

"To me, it's that much more of a guarantee that we do have a drug-free
building," he said of the drug testing implemented more than a year ago by
Holston Management Corp. after buying and rehabilitating his building and
two others. "I think it's great."

It's also rare.

The same company requires the tests of tenants in three of its Chicago
buildings -- one across the street from The Bryn Mawr. And the testing has
been required since 1994 at an apartment complex in Cleveland, but nobody in
the organization that owns that property knows of any other apartment
buildings that have followed its lead.

In both cities the testing -- paid for by property owners, not the tenants
- -- was implemented in areas known for soaring crime rates and illegal drug
use.

"This was a property with a history of terrible problems," said Tom Slemmer,
the president of National Church Residences, an Ohio-based nonprofit
provider of affordable senior and family housing which began testing for
drugs at Summerwood Commons in the Cleveland suburb of Euclid after it
bought the property. "There were suspicious murders on the site that were
drug-related. The building had been shut down and fenced."

In Chicago, the story was the same.

"Dealers would be banging on doors all night and you couldn't leave, take a
vacation (for fear of) someone breaking into your apartment," said Louis
McDonald, 56, a resident of The Bryn Mawr.

What Holston Management Corp. didn't want when they bought the three
buildings, the first in 1997, was to pump millions of dollars -- at one
building alone the tab came to $12 million -- only to watch them fall into
disrepair again.

Neither did the people who lived in and around the buildings.

"They were like cancers in the neighborhood," Jerry Marcoccia, president of
the Edgewater Beach Neighbors Association, said of the Bryn Mawr and the
Belle Shore. And, he said, "They were the key to turning around the
neighborhood."

"When we went in there to do the first rehab, people in the community asked
us, 'What are you going to be doing differently? How do you plan on
screening (would-be tenants)?"' said Candice Howell, a Holston vice
president.

Holston officials asked the same questions. So, the company decided that
along with the background, credit and other checks, it would add a drug
test.

As in Ohio, where a lawyer told the building's owners that the tests were
legal as long as everyone was tested, Howell said Holston officials quickly
concluded that the fastest way to run into legal problems would be to single
out people for the tests.

For its part, the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development, which
enforces the Fair Housing Act, said such a policy is legal as long as it is
enforced in an evenhanded manner and isn't used to discriminate anyone
because of race, national origin or physical disability.

Still, even though everybody was tested, Matthew Roddy, Holston's executive
vice president, figured there'd be a lawsuit. "We talked for five years of
putting together a pool of funds" to fight a legal challenge.

But Avery Friedman, a fair housing attorney in Cleveland, thinks the rule is
legally suspect. "It's illegal to deny housing because of a handicap," he
said. "Chemical dependency is a handicap."

And F. Willis Caruso Sr., a law professor at John Marshall Law School in
Chicago who also runs the school's fair housing clinic, sees another
problem.

"There are people with asthma and other disabilities who may be using
controlled substances and it's perfectly legal," he said. "There is
substantial risk of excluding somebody (from an apartment) with a
disability."

Then there is also another concern that Howell said she's heard raised, that
the test targets poor people and minorities. Howell said that is nonsense.

"It angers me when something like a drug test comes up as an example of
further violation of their rights," she said. "This is a policy aimed at
people engaged in criminal activity. Period."

Still, it seemed an argument that might be used to attack drug testing.

Yet in Ohio, the building's owners are still waiting for the first lawsuit
over drug testing. So is Holston, which has not only used the tests to deny
would-be tenants from renting, but has refused to renew the leases of a
handful of tenants who failed the tests after they moved in.

One reason, said Sherri Kranz, the director of leasing at the Bryn Mawr and
the Belle Shore, is that while it's illegal to deny housing because of past
drug use, it is legal to deny housing to those currently using illegal
drugs. Also, she said, there is a medical review policy to ensure that
people taking drugs for legitimate medical reasons are not denied housing.

Roddy, who said he's "absolutely shocked" the policy hasn't been challenged,
nevertheless thinks there are a couple of other reasons why that hasn't
happened. In Chicago, for example, one way the city has cracked down on
crime, including illegal drug use, is by holding property owners liable for
the criminal behavior of residents and others on their property.

"If we went to court, we'd say, 'How can you hold us liable and not allow us
to correct the problem?"' said Roddy.

Friedman said attorneys like himself would love to take on a building owner
over drug testing. "But you can't create a lawsuit out of air," he said.
"There has to be a victim."

As for the tenants, many said they love the policy. Willie Skipper, a tenant
of the Midwest Apartments, takes his enthusiasm a step further.

"I don't tell anybody about the test" said Skipper, 56. "I don't want them
to get themselves cleaned up long enough to get in there and start using
again."

Why then does the practice remain so rare?

Steve Johnson, Midwest Apartments' property manager, said one reason is the
cost of the tests. "Every test costs $25 and we test everyone in all our 276
units every year," he said. "So it is an expense."

Roddy added that not every owner of property who rents to low-income
residents spends millions of dollars to rehab their buildings. Other
"absentee owners of substandard housing" are, he said, more concerned "about
income and occupancy than ... criminal activity and how the buildings are
cared for."

But Roddy said as word spreads about the success of the policy and about the
completely occupied buildings and the long waiting lists of people hoping to
live there, that will change.

"I think this is going to just mushroom in the affordable housing industry,"
he said.