COURT REVIEWS HOUSING EVICTION LAW

WASHINGTON - Four senior citizens with their apartments on the line are
asking the Supreme Court to say how far the government may go to get drugs
out of public housing.

Justices were to hear arguments Tuesday in a case testing whether entire
families may be evicted from public housing projects for the drug use of
one member, part of a zero-tolerance drug policy for federally subsidized
housing.

A decision is expected before July.

The outcome will affect anyone who lives in public housing, but the
attention in this case is on senior citizens who could be oblivious to
younger family members' drug use.

Public housing directors contend they are doing what Congress intended,
cleaning up housing projects by getting rid of drug users and those who
enable them.

The four Oakland, Calif., senior citizens, including 63-year-old
great-grandmother Pearlie Rucker, sued over the one-strike-and-you're-out
rule. They had received eviction notices because of the drug use of
relatives or caregivers.

An appeals court blocked enforcement of the law.

At issue is whether housing directors are being more aggressive than
Congress intended. The law was passed in 1988 and endorsed by the Clinton
administration in 1996 and by the Bush administration last year.

Families can be removed for the drug use of one member, whether the drug
activity is in the home or somewhere else.

Under the Department of Housing and Urban Development' enforcement program,
tenants may not avoid eviction simply by claiming ignorance of the crime or
an inability to stop it.

"You're not going to have two standards. It's got to be one standard that
applies to all," said Gary T. Lafayette, the attorney for Oakland's housing
authority.

Paul Renne, who will represent the Oakland residents in court, said if they
lose the case, "It will be very difficult for a lot of innocent tenants.

"They don't have the ability to go out and find other housing," he said.

More than 1.7 million families headed by people over age 61 live in
government -subsidized housing, the AARP and other groups told the Supreme
Court. Those people should not be punished for something they knew nothing
about and had no control over, the groups argued.

A public safety group, the Center for the Community Interest, said such
tough rules are needed to combat savvy dealers.

"Drug dealers entrench themselves in public housing communities, terrorize
the majority of law-abiding residents, then exploit legal procedures to
thwart housing authorities' attempts to remove them," the group said in a
filing.

Pearlie Rucker's mentally disabled daughter was caught with cocaine three
blocks from the apartment she shared with her mother and other family
members, court records show.

Rucker and the other three senior citizens in the case remain in public
housing, pending the court's decision. The four were not expected to attend
the court argument.

The cases are Department of Housing and Urban Development v. Rucker,
00-1770, and Oakland Housing Authority v. Rucker, 00-1781.

On the Net:

For the appeals court ruling in Rucker v. Oakland Housing Authority and
Department of Housing and Urban Development:
http://www.uscourts.gov/links.html and click on 9th Circuit.