DOUBLE STANDARDS FOR PUBLIC HOUSING
BY JULIANNE MALVEAUX
Imagine this. I’m a guest in a five-star hotel and am visited by a friend who,
unfortunately, creates a disturbance. The inebriated friend perhaps creates a
scene in the lobby, perhaps brings an illegal substance onto hotel premises.
I’m clueless – asleep in my room, unaware, even, that my friend is coming by.
What should the hotel do? Most would just eject the friend from the premises.
But if I was sleeping in public housing, not a five-star hotel, the Supreme
Court says that I could be evicted from my room, even as my friend is evicted
from the lobby.
Imagine further The friend doesn’t show out in the lobby, but down the block.
In a zero tolerance law and order world, his acting-out behavior might merit
arrest. But again, in the Supreme Court world of HUD v. Rucker, if the friend
made it clear he was in the area to visit me, I too might experience
repercussions from her visit.
Would the court feel as comfortable saying that a member of the United States
Senate should be put out of office if one of his staff members breaks the law?
That President Bush should be put out of the White House because little Barb and
Jenna drink too much (not such a stretch) while they are there? HUD v. Rucker
is a case that speaks to double standards, and to the victimization of poor
women, who hold the majority of the leases in public housing.
In a case argued before the Supreme Court a month ago, San Francisco attorney
Paul Renee pointed out a set of inequities that undermine housing security for
some public housing residents. In one case, a grandmother was evicted because
her granddaughter used drugs three blocks away from her grandmother’s project.
In other cases, the drug use was closer to home, but the women who held the
leases were not the ones who used drugs. Their crime – they signed leases that
had a zero tolerance drug policy, a policy that many may consider excessive and
unworkable given the proliferation of drugs in poor, inner-city areas. The
Court felt that people’s agreement to the lease (which they had no choice about)
meant they had to abide by its terms. But just imagine if these terms were
applied to people who do not live in public housing. In those cases, our
embarrassing relatives are seen as exactly that, embarrassing. But their drug
and alcohol use does not imperil the housing status of an entire family.
This issue is especially important given the paucity of affordable housing in
our nations. Too many people can’t afford market-rate housing and are pushed
into public housing. Nationally, 1.3 million Americans live in public hosing,
mostly because of their income status. Their sentence for knowing people who
use drugs is a harsh one – homelessness. At stake here is due process of the
law, equal protection, and a notion of justice that extends beyond the rich,
powerful, and otherwise housed. If the law doesn’t pass the smell test for
private housing, hotel occupancy, or Congressional membership, it ought not pass
the smell test for people who live in public housing. But our nation has so
demonized poverty in the past generation that people who live in public housing
are seen as sub-human. They can be forced to live up to standards that others
do not have to live up to, to follow rules that others would find if not
onerous, impossible to follow. “This (Supreme Court) decision places an
unreasonable burden on poor parents that other parents simply do not face,” said
Dan Abrahamson, director of legal affairs for the Drug Policy Alliance, the
nation’s leading drug policy reform organization. “Jeb Bush was not kicked out
of his public housing due to his daughter’s drug use. Other parents should be
given the same respect.”
How responsible should a grandparent be for her grandchild? A mother for an
adult, mentally disabled child? Should the housing status of these families
depend on the behavior of someone who doesn’t even live in the home? Congress
passed a law that said they should, and the Supreme Court affirmed the law.
Now, I’d like to see those who are responsible for this unfair legislation try
and live by it. Is it appropriate for our society to create a set of penalties
that punishes Congressional parents for the misconduct of their children, which
holds members of the Court responsible for behavior of their clerks? Until and
unless our lawmakers are willing to live by the same standards they hold the
poor to, those laws need to be repealed.