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| Drug Ruling Worries Some in Public Housing |
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Posted by FoM on March 28, 2002 at 10:20:33 PT By Evelyn Nieves Source: New York Times 
Herman Walker is getting too old for all this worry. His feet ache from 79 years of wear and tear; lingering complications from a stroke five years ago have him in and out of his doctor's office; and he is bone-tired. The last thing he needs to fret about is getting kicked out of his apartment and ending up on the street."I didn't do anything wrong," Mr. Walker said in a wavering voice after he was reached by phone at the one-bedroom apartment he has called home for more than 10 years. Indeed, no one at the Oakland Housing Authority has said Mr. Walker has done anything but behave like an upstanding citizen. But minding his own business, keeping his apartment in order and doing right by the neighbors may not be enough to keep him in public housing. On Tuesday, Mr. Walker became a marked man. When the United States Supreme Court upheld a federal law that permits the eviction of public housing tenants if a family member who lived in their unit, or a guest, was arrested on drug charges, the justices, in effect, said Oakland could evict Mr. Walker and three other elderly residents for drug use they did not know about. The 8-to-0 decision on Tuesday overturned a ruling by the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit that innocent tenants could not be evicted. Justice Stephen G. Breyer did not take part in the decision because of a conflict of interest. Public housing residents and tenant rights advocates here and throughout the country say the decision is a harsh punishment for poor and elderly residents. "What the decision said is if you have a guest and they leave and walk across the street and commit a crime, you can be evicted," said Anne Omura, executive director of the Oakland Eviction Defense Center, which had sued the authority on behalf of the four elderly tenants. Mr. Walker, who received an eviction notice because Housing Authority officials found that his full-time caretaker had hidden crack pipes in his apartment, has other options before he can be evicted from his apartment in a building in downtown Oakland. He is partly paralyzed, and the Eviction Defense Center has filed a lawsuit on his behalf under the federal Americans with Disabilities Act, as well as a state lawsuit that also challenges the Housing Authority's decision to evict him. But Mr. Walker, who spent part of Tuesday in the hospital and was fielding requests for comment from reporters most of the day, is not resting easy. "I don't want to leave," he said. Residents of public housing and their advocates say they are worried because the elderly residents affected by the ruling are stark examples of how the rules adopted by the Department of Housing and Urban Development in 1991 can have the unintended consequence of punishing the innocent. Pearlie Rucker, 63, who challenged the Housing Authority in 1996, faced eviction because her mentally disabled daughter was arrested on charges of possessing cocaine three blocks from their home. Her case was dropped when her daughter moved away and completed drug rehabilitation. The other two tenants, Willie Lee, 74, and Barbara Hill, 67, had teenage grandsons who lived in their apartments and were arrested on charges of smoking marijuana in the parking lot of the public housing. Both say they did not know about the drug use outside their quiet public housing in a middle-class neighborhood. Whitty Somvichian, a San Francisco lawyer who helped the Eviction Defense Center prepare its challenge, said that while the four elderly residents in the lawsuit were not facing imminent eviction, public housing residents across the country have reason to worry. As written and as upheld by the Supreme Court, Mr. Somvichian said, the zero-tolerance law could punish a public housing tenant for something a relative does far from the tenant's residence. "Our argument has always been that if you read the statute literally, you can evict a grandmother who lives in Oakland if their granddaughter is smoking pot in New York," he said. Lily Tony, a spokeswoman for the Housing Authority, said that the ruling would benefit more people than it would punish, though she conceded that it penalized people for something they did not do. "While it may not be fair, it's what we have to do," Ms. Tony said, adding that the Housing Authority would announce its decision on the four residents in a day or two. Ms. Omura said she and other housing advocates hoped Congress would change the law to correct its obvious flaws. Representative Barbara Lee, a Democrat who represents Oakland, today issued a statement expressing concern about the law's broad reach and said it was especially troubling given President Bush's elimination of a policing program for public housing that provided programs for substance abusers. But she stopped short of proposing to change the law. Source: New York Times (NY) Related Articles: Scales of Justice Justices Rule Drug-Eviction Law Is Fair Supreme Court Backs Public Housing Drug Ban Home Comment Email Register Recent Comments Help |
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| Comment #4 posted by FoM on March 31, 2002 at 08:07:53 PT |
| Oakland Tenants' Case: Supreme Court Justices Touchy About Drugs
Source: San Francisco Chronicle The Supreme Court unanimously allowed housing authorities in Oakland last week to evict low-income tenants for drug activity they knew nothing about. A year ago, the court -- in another unanimous ruling, also from Oakland -- barred distribution of medical marijuana to seriously ill patients. The justices also appear ready to expand drug testing of students not suspected of drug use. Is the court moving to the front ranks of the war on drugs? Don't jump to conclusions, say legal analysts who have studied recent cases and can cite evidence to the contrary. "They do not have a uniform response to drug-related disputes," said Rory Little, a professor at the University of California's Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco. He and others noted that the court, in its 2000-01 term, ruled against police roadblocks on a city street to search cars for drugs; rejected mandatory drug testing of pregnant women for law enforcement purposes; and refused to allow the warrantless use by police of a thermal scanner on the exterior of a house to detect marijuana growing inside. In the previous term, the justices refused to let police squeeze the bags of public transit passengers for evidence of drugs. In trying to gauge the court's direction, it's not as simple as just saying "this is a drug case" -- and therefore the government wins, said Jesse Choper, a professor at the University of California at Berkeley's Boalt Hall School of Law. Perhaps, he said, "the justices identify with roadblocks, but they don't identify with housing developments." "The closer you get to the Supreme Court, the more sensitive they become," said Little, noting that the only time the court has found random drug testing unconstitutional was when it was directed at judges and legislators in Georgia. The court is "highly sensitive to the threat of drugs . . . especially in places where there are children," like schools and housing projects, said Douglas Kmiec, dean of the Catholic University School of Law in Washington, D.C. At the same time, Kmiec said, the justices are unwilling to let the war on drugs disrupt an everyday activity, like downtown driving, "in ways that are counter to the freedom of travel Americans expect as a matter of right." Still, the four elderly Oakland tenants who lost Tuesday's ruling were only the latest in a long line of Americans whose claims of individual rights before the nation's highest court lost out to the government's power to fight the scourge of narcotics. The list in the last two decades includes Native Americans smoking peyote for ritual purposes, high school athletes who objected to drug testing, drivers stopped on pretexts for minor traffic violations and air travelers who fit "drug courier" profiles. "For the last 20 years, the Supreme Court has been tremendously deferential to the government in drug cases. This (eviction) case is the most recent manifestation," said Erwin Chemerinsky, a University of Southern California law professor. The justices' attitudes were on display March 19 in arguments over an Oklahoma high school's drug testing of students involved in extracurricular activities, an expansion of the testing of athletes previously approved by the court. A ruling is due by the end of June. American Civil Liberties Union attorney Graham Boyd, representing a choir singer and her parents, was reproached by Justice Anthony Kennedy, who said no parents -- except possibly Boyd's clients -- would want to send their children to a "druggie school." At another point, Justice Antonin Scalia asked Boyd, "You think life and death is not an issue in the fight against drugs?" Likewise, Chief Justice William Rehnquist began Tuesday's ruling in the eviction case quoting Congress about drug dealers' "reign of terror" in public housing projects. But the terse 10-page opinion was notable for its cool, clinical tone and the virtual invisibility of the Oakland tenants who challenged their evictions. Lower court rulings had included the tenants' stories to illustrate what, in their view, was an absurd eviction policy: Pearlie Rucker, 63, whose mentally disabled daughter was caught with cocaine three blocks away; Willie Lee, 71, and Barbara Hill, 67, whose grandsons were arrested for smoking marijuana in a nearby parking lot; and Herman Walker, 75, a partially paralyzed man whose caretaker hid crack pipes in Walker's apartment. The lower courts ruled in their favor, saying such tenants -- who had no knowledge of the drugs, had tried to keep drugs out of their apartments and posed no threat to their neighbors -- could not have been the intended targets of the federal law in question. That 1988 law allowed public housing authorities to evict tenants for drug crimes by household members and guests. The Supreme Court ruling mentioned the tenants only once and noted that they had signed leases allowing the Oakland Housing Authority to evict them in such cases. Rehnquist said he saw nothing absurd or unconstitutional in enforcing the leases since a tenant who can't control drug-using household members is a menace to the entire project. Hastings' Little said the court was ignoring reality in concluding that the tenants had any control over the terms of their leases. Complete Title: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/chronicle/archive/2002/03/31/MN180779.DTL [ Post Comment ] |
| Comment #3 posted by DdC on March 28, 2002 at 13:11:32 PT |
| How silly. Prison gaurds sell them the drugs in the first place why would they put themselves out of business anymore than John Walters or Bushit profiting on WoD? Sure they confiscate parephernalia but thats just so they can sell them more later. Inventing crimes to profit on is the second oldest profession. Like cops outside confiscating cash and drugs to use for snitches and to stuff into political pockets and their own. Too much temptation and no one cares and "they" deserve it...Forfeiture or plain old intimidation fascist pigs aren't citizens yet they block legislation and protest for D.E.A.th when their job is supposed to be over. Hired hand public servants aren't paid to convict and exicute or to protest releases or continuing child molestations brainwashing DARE lies to them. Public servants maintaining peace not private security. Not hired to spy on kids bathroom habits trying to bust one of their parents on mmj growing, known from released drunks snitch testimony. Not to bust someone outspoken to forfeit their farms or kill them if they endanger no one. Raping the Bill of Rights ain't American.
Go to work doughnut munchers, stop wasting taxfunds picking ditchweeds or busting sick ones while kids buy booze at every corner. Cops ain't better than anyone else, they get paid to do a job, no more a hero than any other slob surviving the best they can. No more pedistals or prestege... they're blue colar workers with a badge, thatys it! Except instead of working for a living they want laws to do it for them, and then invest their retirement funds on Japanese Private prison construction stocks. While more kids fall through the cracks, now they want the poor, homeless. If someone tokes in the parking lot. Taking food and tuition while raising war machines profits ain't a problem. Klintoon or Bushit whats the difference, one has a tad more fascism experience and the others a good student. Incarcerate the politicians profiting on destruction of the Constitution! Peace, Love and Liberty or Funky Sicko WoD Junkie D.E.A.th! DdC Anslinger-Bush-Hearst-Nixon-Hitler-Nalepka Jüs Déjå vü!!! Amerika, Amerika by Claire Wolfe [ Post Comment ] |
| Comment #2 posted by Dark Star on March 28, 2002 at 10:49:01 PT |
| When an inmate uses drugs, they make him stay there so that he can be rehabilitated and learn the error of his ways. [ Post Comment ] |
| Comment #1 posted by goneposthole on March 28, 2002 at 10:41:37 PT |
| If a prisoner in prison gets cought using drugs, does he get evicted from prison? [ Post Comment ] |
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