Pubdate: Thu, 28 Mar 2002
Source: New York Times (NY)
Section: National
Copyright: 2002 The New York Times Company
Contact:  http://www.nytimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/298
Author: Evelyn Nieves

DRUG RULING WORRIES SOME IN PUBLIC HOUSING

OAKLAND, Calif., March 27 -- 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.
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MAP posted-by: Terry Liittschwager