GRANDMOTHER CLAUSE

The Supreme Court has upheld a controversial federal policy that allows
public housing officials to evict entire families when a family member --
even a teenage 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 housing
authority is reconsidering. But I'm glad the housing authorities still have
that weapon in its 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 crime bazaars. The
noncriminal majority of residents found their lives turned upside down by
neighbors -- and 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 of the illegal activity.

But soon leaders in the public housing tenant-management movement got sick
of it, and people, such as 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 homes -- and 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 apartment -- or 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 Pearlie Rucker case seemed 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 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 circumstances -- even with a presumption of knowledge. Based
on what I've read of the Rucker case, a stern warning would have made a lot
more sense than summary eviction.

But I understand, too, the fragility of poor communities and their
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
outside because the criminal element has taken over.

It 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.