SENSIBLE RESTRICTIONS NEEDED ON DRUGS IN PUBLIC HOUSING

The Supreme Court has upheld a controversial federal policy that allows
public housing officials to evict entire families when a family membereven
a teen-age child -- is caught with illegal drugs in or near the housing
complex.

And you know what? I'm glad.

No, I'm not glad that Pearlie Rucker, a 63-year-old great-grandmother, was
threatened with eviction by the Oakland Housing Authority because her adult
son and her mentally disabled daughter were caught with cocaine in separate
incidents several blocks from their home. That was too rough a decision,
and I've been told that, following last Tuesday's ruling, the OHA is
reconsidering. But I'm glad the housing authorities still have that weapon
in their arsenal.

You might be, too, if you can get past the awfulness of having poor,
helpless grandmothers tossed out of their homes and remember why the rule
was introduced in the first place. It was at a time when drug dealers and
gangbangers were turning public housing complexes into virtual crime
bazaars. The noncriminal majority of residents found their lives turned
upside-down by neighborsand neighbors' children -- who were using and
selling drugs, either from individual apartments or on the grounds.

What to do about it? As the law then stood, unless the person in whose name
the apartment was leased was caught red-handed, he or she had only to plead
ignorance to the illegal activity. I had no idea my son was using drugs, no
idea my boyfriend and his cousin were dealing out of the building, no idea
'.'.'. of anything.

But soon, leaders in the public housing tenant-management movement got sick
of it, and people like the late Kimi Gray of Washington and Bertha Gilkey
of St. Louis started pressing federal officials to give them the leeway to
pressure tenants to shape up or face eviction.

One result was sterner screening standards for new tenants; another was the
right to reward (with choicer units) residents who kept their places up and
their children under control. A third was the so-called "One Strike" policy
that Pearlie Rucker and others fought all the way to the Supreme Court,
where they lost last week.

Under "One Strike," tenants have to sign a lease that includes an agreement
to keep their public housing premises free of drug-related and other
criminal activity. The implication is that they know, or should know, what
is going on in their homesand if they don't, the threat of being suddenly
homeless should be enough to pique their curiosity.

Nor would it be enough under the policy simply to move the criminal
activity outside the apartmentor even just outside the grounds. Drug
dealing by a member of a resident's household near the complex could still
result in eviction.

Could. The eviction is permitted but not required, which is why the
handling of the particular case of Pearlie Rucker seemed unnecessarily
ham-handed. A rule requiring proof of knowledge would do nothing to stop
the descent into chaos that marks so many public housing complexes. A rule
requiring eviction under any and every circumstance of family-member
involvement with criminality would be just another example of "zero
tolerance" gone mad. The inflexibility of crack cocaine enforcement has
America's prisons bursting at the seams, with little positive to show for
it. People have to be free to make judgments based on a totality of
circumstanceseven with a presumption of knowledge. Based on what I've read
of the Rucker case and some others in the suit, a stern warning would have
made a lot more sense than summary eviction.

But I understand, too, the fragility of poor communities, and their special
vulnerability to the predations of a relative handful of miscreants. There
are public housing and other low-income communities where ordinary
residents dare not enjoy the spring breeze or allow their children to play
on the grounds because the criminal element has taken over.

It really comes down to a choice between a liberal interpretation of the
civil liberties of those affected by "One Strike" and enforcing at least
the possibility of a safe community for those willing to live by the rules.

Having seen both the devastation wreaked by the gangbangers and the hopeful
patience of poor families on the long waiting lists for public housing, I
choose "One Strike."

Sensibly enforced, of course. Grandma Pearlie doesn't need to be on the street.