EVICTING INNOCENT TENANTS UNJUST

It's not even spring yet, and already there's been a shooting at RiverWest,
the reinvented Warner Homes.

No one was injured. A 19-year-old told police he was visiting relatives
when someone shot at him. Police found four bullet holes in the newly built
house.

Technically the Peoria Housing Authority does not manage RiverWest, though
the $44 million project is the PHA's baby, its bright, shiny new example of
how to change public housing as we know it. The residents of the house hit
by bullets do receive rental assistance through the PHA's Section 8 program.

"We wouldn't evict any of those folks; they didn't do anything wrong," says
PHA attorney Brian Mooty. "But we did look into it."

Until very recently, public housing residents in Illinois didn't have to do
anything wrong to get an eviction notice. Something wrong, say drug sales
or a violent shooting, merely had to take place in their apartment or
rental home. They didn't have to condone it, they didn't have to know about
it, they didn't have to be home at the time. In some cases, the something
wrong didn't have to happen at their address. Residents were still evicted
or threatened with eviction.

The strict liability clause was one element of public housing's celebrated
"one-strike-and-you're-out" policy. In 1996, then-president Bill Clinton
hailed it and local public housing officials glorified it with a
ribbon-cutting ceremony.

"There will be people evicted with children, and it will be difficult," PHA
director Roger John said at the time. "But they will know what the rules are."

For now, Illinois' Third District Appellate Court has determined the rules
are all wrong, as interpreted by some housing authorities, and those
evictions have halted in the state. What happens next likely depends on how
the U.S. Supreme Court rules in a similar case coming out of California.

First, the bare facts of the Illinois case, Housing Authority of Joliet vs.
Keys, decided this past December:

Patricia Keys' adult grandson lived with her. Court records describe her as
an "elderly woman in a walker, (whose) court appearances had to be
scheduled consistent with her appointments for dialysis."

While Keys was in the hospital, her grandson was arrested and subsequently
confessed to robbing and shooting a man at Keys' home. The Joliet Housing
Authority started eviction proceedings, lost the case in trial court, then
appealed it, only to lose again.

"The eviction of tenants who have no knowledge of criminal activity can
neither deter or reduce criminal activity," the appellate court said in its
opinion.

The facts of the Oakland, Calif., case, argued before the Supreme Court
last week aren't all that different.

One elderly woman was served with an eviction notice after her mentally
disabled daughter was caught with cocaine three blocks from the apartment.
In another case, Oakland's housing authority began eviction proceedings
against an elderly man after it was alleged that his home-health care
worker brought drugs into his home.

Mooty says the PHA has never used the one-strike policy much. The agency
has tended to use other tactics over the strict liability clause, he says,
and right now, thanks to the appellate court decision, they're being
cautious about that.

Illinois' Third Appellate Court made the right decision in a horrible case.
But who knows what U.S. Supreme Court justices will say come summer when
they're expected to hand down a decision? What is called a one-strike
policy looks more like no strikes allowed.