Supreme Court gives public housing leaders OK to use evictions to combat drugs

WASHINGTON (AP) _ The Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that government agencies can use aggressive eviction policies to get rid of drug users in public housing. <br><br>Justices, without dissent, said they

Tuesday, March 26th 2002, 12:00 am

By: News On 6

WASHINGTON (AP) _ The Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that government agencies can use aggressive eviction policies to get rid of drug users in public housing.

Justices, without dissent, said they had no problem with a federal law and related policies that allow entire families to be evicted from public housing for drug use by one member.

The ruling is a relief for housing leaders, who argued that without such tools drug problems would worsen in public housing.

The losers were four elderly California tenants who challenged the zero-tolerance policy for drugs in federally subsidized housing after receiving eviction notices.

Justices dismissed the tenants claims' that they should be allowed to avoid eviction by showing that they were unaware of wrongdoing.

Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist wrote that the government, as a landlord, can control activities of its tenants while trying to provide safe, drug-free housing.

The ``one-strike'' provision was part of a drug law Congress passed in 1988 amid complaints about crime in public housing. The challenge here centered on policies developed to follow the law.

Critics of the law said the Supreme Court should have recognized that the evictions are too harsh.

``The only way they can get away with it is because it affects poor people,'' Sheila Crowley, head of the National Low Income Housing Coalition, said Tuesday.

The ruling affects anyone who lives in public housing. Senior citizens groups argued that the elderly would be hurt the most. More than 1.7 million families headed by people over age 61 live in government-subsidized housing.

``It is not absurd that a local housing authority may sometimes evict a tenant who had no knowledge of drug-related activity,'' Rehnquist wrote.

He said that even if tenants were unaware of the drug use, they could still be held responsible for not controlling narcotics crime of family members.

The residents in this case were from Oakland, Calif., but public housing groups nationwide have followed the case. Similar lawsuits are pending in other courts.

The Supreme Court reversed a decision by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in favor of the California tenants, including 63-year-old Pearlie Rucker, whose mentally disabled daughter was caught with cocaine three blocks from the apartment she shared with her mother and other family members.

When the case was argued before the court last month, some justices seemed sympathetic to the senior citizens. But they agreed that the law allowed their evictions.

``Any drug-related activity engaged in by the specified persons is grounds for termination, not just drug-related activity that the tenant knew, or should have known, about,'' Rehnquist wrote.

Justice Stephen Breyer did not take part in the ruling.

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