HARD LINE ON EVICTION HITS HOME

(Boston)-Gloria Searcy rose early yesterday, took a deep breath, and while her
children slept began the emotional task of moving from the only home
she has known for 26 years.

''In 1973, I was given these keys and now they are telling me I have
to go,'' said Searcy, 44. ''I'm going to walk out and hold my head up
and move forward.'' Eight months after a federal raid at the
Bromley-Heath housing development resulted in the Boston Housing
Authority taking control of the Jamaica Plain complex from its tenant
managers, Searcy's is the first of 18 families being evicted for
alleged drug-related or violent offenses that officials say occurred
prior to the takeover.

The evictions are a response to a federal ''one-strike'' law aimed at
ridding public housing developments of drugs. According to the BHA,
the policy was not being enforced by Bromley-Heath Tenant Management
Corp., which had run the development for 25 years.

But in the eyes of tenants like Searcy - evicted because her
drug-addicted, paraplegic son sold five bags of heroin to an
undercover police officer in 1997 in a different housing development -
the BHA's backtracking is potentially doing more harm than good by
forcing innocent family members out in the streets.

''Where do we go from here?'' said Searcy, who lived in the
four-bedroom apartment with her four children and two grandchildren
ranging from age 1 to 29. She expects to temporarily move in with
relatives. Her house was in a frenzy yesterday, clothes strewn across
the floors to be packed in boxes, thrown away, or stored.

Searcy admits her 29-year-old son, Michael, once dubbed by police as
The Wheelchair Bandit, has had a serious drug problem since a shooting
in 1988 that resulted in the loss of part of his left leg. But his
evicted siblings should not have to pay the price for his problems,
she said. ''I want Boston to see how this can destroy a whole family.
And, I want kids to see how their actions can hurt the rest of the
family,'' Searcy said.

The 1996 one-strike law under which the families are being evicted is one
of the toughest drug policies created to clean up housing developments.
''One strike in general is a dragnet. It reaches everybody in the
household,'' said Jackie
Roundtree, spokeswoman for the Boston HUD office. The law calls for
families to be evicted if even one family member who is listed on the
lease is connected to a drug-related crime; a criminal conviction is
not needed. The law goes so far as to evict a family whose member may
have sold or used drugs in another state, said Roundtree. While
evictions increased in public housing units across the country after
1996, Bromley-Heath sought a total of only 27 evictions in 1997 and
1998, according to documents. Only a few of those were drug-related.
Housing officials and tenant managers refused to discuss the recent
evictions, because they are still negotiating for the return of the
development to tenants. However, the BHA did say that eviction
proceedings have begun against 18 families since the October takeover.
Most of those cases involve alleged crimes related to drugs or
violence, or both, according to Lydia Agro, spokeswoman for the BHA.

One family ended the eviction process by volunteering to leave the
development. To date, only Searcy's case has been completed. ''People
are scared to do anything,'' said Paula Pringle, 35, who is also being
evicted. ''But we are not taking this sitting down.'' This month,
Pringle, a mother of two, acted as her own attorney in housing court.
She lost. In her case, a 1996 incident involving her son, Kenneth
Wigham, led to the eviction. He was 14 at the time and allegedly was
hanging with older boys who left him holding a bag of drugs.

The case was dismissed and Pringle said her son's behavior improved.
She thought they had moved on.

''So when the raid happened, I was happy that they were trying to get
drugs out of the development, and then I get this letter in the
mail,'' she said. ''How are they going to condemn us for something
that happened three years ago?'' Pringle and Searcy said the tenant
managers talked with them about their children's alleged drug
activity, but eviction was never a consideration. ''They knew my son
wasn't a problem child. So they figured why put a family out in the
streets. We are all family,'' said Pringle. Pointing outside the
window of her immaculate apartment - filled with plants and pictures
of her two teenagers - Pringle wondered where else they could afford
to live.

Housing officials say the vacant apartments will be made available to
families who have been on the waiting list for public housing for
years. The list has more than 10,000 names.

Families evicted for drug-related crimes will find it nearly
impossible to move into another subsidized apartment, according to
Yadira Reyes, of City Life, a housing advocacy program in Jamaica
Plain. Most, she said, will have to double up and might have to wait
up to seven years before finding another subsidized unit. Meanwhile,
rents on market rate units are soaring in Boston. After trying
desperately to find lawyers and politicians to help the Bromley-Heath
families who are being evicted, Pringle, a former construction worker,
suggested to some of the female tenants that they buy a home together.
Searcy, meanwhile, prays she can keep the family together. ''Hell, we
will be all right,'' she said.