Court
Says
Public
Housing
Authorities
Can
Evict
Tenants
Who
Knew
Nothing
of
Drug
Use
2/18/00
A federal appeals court ruled on Monday (2/13) that public housing tenants can be evicted for a household member or guest's alleged drug use, even if the tenant had no knowledge of the activity. The 2-1 decision by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals allows broad latitude for housing authorities to enforce a "one-strike and you're out" anti-drug eviction policy written into federal law in 1988. The case grew out of eviction notices served to four public housing lease-holders in Oakland, California in 1997, based on provisions in their leases that tenants must "assure" that no family members, guests, or other persons under their control engage in drug-related criminal activity on or near the premises. In none of the instances did the Oakland Housing Authority allege that the tenants were involved in, or even aware of the alleged drug activity. In the first instance, 63-year-old Pearlie Rucker was served notice of eviction after her grown daughter, who has been mentally disabled since childhood and lives with her, was caught with a single rock of crack cocaine and a crack pipe three blocks from Rucker's home. In another instance, Herman Walker, a 75-year-old disabled man, was served notice after housing authority police found crack paraphernalia in the belongings of a caretaker Walker had hired to help him around his home. The other instances in the case involve two elderly women, Willie Lee and Barbara Hill, whose grandsons, who lived with them, were caught smoking marijuana in the parking lot of their housing complex. Both women were served eviction notices. The tenants filed suit in federal court against the Oakland Housing Authority and the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) in 1998, asking that the housing authority be barred from carrying out the evictions. US District Court Judge Charles Breyer granted a preliminary injunction. In overturning Breyer's decision, Judge Diarmuid O'Scannlain, joined by Judge Joseph Sneed, wrote that HUD's policy was a necessary means of "preventing tenants from turning a blind eye to the conduct of a household member or guest." Forcing housing authorities to prove that a tenant knew or should have known of others' drug use would, the court said, "hamstring efforts to rid public housing of the crime and violence with which low-income families must cope on a daily basis." In his dissenting opinion, however, Judge William Fletcher wrote that the policy "deprives innocent people of property that was not involved in any crime and punishes innocent people for crimes that they did not commit and could not prevent." Part of the court's reasoning was based on the fact that the one-strike policy relies on the discretion of the local housing authority. Local authorities are supposed to decide on a case-by-case basis whether tenants are complying with the drug provision of their leases. But Ira Jacobowitz, an attorney for the tenants in Rucker v. HUD, told The Week Online that given the racial disparity in the way drug cases are prosecuted in this country, "It certainly doesn't comport with fairness to allow the housing authority the leeway to decide who is suspicious and who needs to be evicted for drug related activity." Fair or not, Congress granted HUD that authority in 1988, at the height of the crack scare, when stories of innocent bystanders gunned down in housing projects by warring drug gangs dominated the nightly news. HUD raised the stakes in the 90's by offering hundreds of millions of dollars in grant money to local housing authorities specifically to enforce its one-strike policy. Jacobowitz said he and his clients must now decide whether to ask for a rehearing of their case en banc (before the full Ninth Circuit Court), appeal to the Supreme Court, or to fight the evictions in state court.
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