DISCRETION NEEDED ON STRICT HIGH COURT RULING

ILLEGAL drugs breed crime, tarnish neighborhoods and put innocent people in
danger every day.

HUD officials need strong laws to help clean up the drug problem at public
housing complexes, and in its Tuesday ruling the U.S. Supreme Court
concluded that one such law allows the agency to evict public housing
tenants for their relatives' or houseguests' drug use, regardless of how
much they knew what was going on.

We support that conclusion, but also believe housing authorities and other
agencies that run subsidized housing programs need to be judicious in the
issuance of evictions in such situations, reviewing each incident with
compassion and on a case-by-case basis.

The historic Oakland case involves four tenants who are 66 and older,
including one who is disabled. In three of the cases, a relative used drugs
nearby. In the fourth case, a home health care worker was caught using crack
cocaine in the tenant's apartment.

All the tenants signed leases that mentioned the federal zero-tolerance
policy created by Congress.

Maybe holding HUD residents accountable for the drug sins of relatives and
visitors will inspire more tenants to make sure they don't look the other
way. Ignoring drug use in a community only perpetuates the problem.

And if tenants, once they are warned, realize they'll be kicked out for the
drug use of visitors and relatives, they'll tell those folks they aren't
welcome there.

The dangers of drug use to the wider neighborhood can't be underestimated.
You've heard the stories a million times. Someone making methamphetamine
spills a caustic chemical. Cops chasing an addict who robbed a liquor store
cause a fatal car wreck. A dope deal turns violent and a kid standing nearby
ends up shot.

The housing authority has long pushed for compliance. This law is nothing
new.

In the private sector, anyone who signs a housing lease knows he or she is
agreeing to obey a set of specific conditions and risks eviction if those
conditions are violated.

Of course, as the Supreme Court pointed out in its ruling, local housing
authorities don't have to evict. They have the latitude to weigh the
severity of individual cases and decide whether the tenant took reasonable
steps to prevent it.

We urge local housing authority officials to apply the law humanely, and it
appears they are.

According to an ANG Newspapers report Thursday, the Oakland Housing
Authority says it won't evict the elderly tenants as long as the people
involved with drugs have left. Perhaps the publicity over the case
influenced the authority's decision, but we hope this shows the law can be
reasonably applied and won't result in residents being kicked out
cavalierly, as has been feared by opponents of the one-strike policy.

In Thursday's New York Times, Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Oakland, issued a
statement expressing concern about the law's broad reach and said it is
especially troubling given President George W. Bush's elimination of a
policing program for public housing that provided programs for substance
abusers.

Lee brings up an important point: It's one thing to kick people out of
federally subsidized housing for breaking the rules, but kicking them out
doesn't solve the greater problem of drug addiction. The government needs to
provide programs to help abusers.

However, it's important to note that Lee stopped short of proposing to
change the law.

Sometimes we have to support tough laws to solve tough problems. We need to
make sure federally subsidized housing complexes are clean, safe places to
live, but also places where those who abide by the law can continue to live.