PUBLIC HOUSING OR DRUG BAZAAR?

HUD rejects S.F. Housing Authority's bid for drug programs, forcing The
City to quit ignoring a long-time social disaster

WE WISH there were a way to halt the tendency of government officials, deep
thinkers, politicians, concerned citizens and just about everyone else to
(1) consider a serious social problem, (2) agree on a possible solution,
(3) devise a program of some kind, (4) authorize expenditures of public
funds, (5) appoint an administrator and (6) never give it another look.

How else in an otherwise enlightened society in the final years of a
Century of Progress can we explain our blindness, a contemptible failure to
deal effectively with the long-term ruination of public housing turned into
drug bazaars? Only by looking elsewhere - an understandable tendency that
afflicts journalists as well as mayors - could anyone fail to notice that
even an outsider with cash might wait up to 5 minutes at many a public
housing project before buying a paper bag with illegal powders, pastes or
herbal substances.

That's true throughout America, but this week the focus is on San Francisco
and its Housing Authority. The federal Department of Housing and Urban
Development has granted in the past up to $1.6 million per year for drug
prevention and education programs aimed at youngsters in The City's public
housing. Instead, after an acidulous report by HUD investigators, San
Francisco is the only large city to have its application firmly rejected.
The reasons include "lack of ability to manage housing," "too much staff,
too little (in the way of) programs," lack of endorsements from the chief
of police and Mayor Brown, documentation described as "how not to prepare a
grant application" and a fund request that included only two items - money
to pay for Mayor Brown's TURF project, which employs at-risk youths as
security guards in the projects, and funds for administration. HUD kept
score: The Housing Authority request was given 46 points out of a possible
100.

Perhaps we should be grateful.

It got our attention.

A drug market in public housing is a cancerous social catastrophe for all
concerned, especially the children. It's time to end the blindness.

It's time to demand accountability. It's time to tell our public servants
that this is one problem that we can no longer pretend to file and forget.

1998 San Francisco Examiner Page A 16

Checked-by: (Joel W. Johnson)