The Huffington Post reports on yet another appalling situation brought on by the war on drugs. A mother of three who needs a kidney transplant is being kicked out of public housing because someone else was caught with drug paraphernalia in her house.
For now, Anderson lives with her three children, ages 4, 7 and 14, in a three-bedroom town house about two miles west of Old Town Alexandria. This past May, she received notice that her lease would be terminated. The city is trying to evict her for crimes that she didn’t commit — not even the city claims she did — under a 1996 drug war policy developed by the Department of Housing and Urban Development to make public housing safer.
Under HUD’s one-strike policy, any drug offense may lead to eviction from public housing, even offenses of which the tenants themselves are unaware and even if the offenses were committed off-site. And that has led to cases like Anderson’s, in which a poor, single, desperately ill woman and her three kids may lose the only place they have to live over someone else’s misbehavior.
In this case, that someone else was her mother, who they say actually had cleaned up before they found the paraphernalia in a bag in some of her belongings being stored there. And this is yet another example where both parties support repugnant laws like this. And this is hardly an unusual situation:
Stories abound about the one-strike policy being wielded in seemingly egregious ways to evict “innocent tenants,” such as a disabled elderly man in California whose caretaker was caught with crack. (Although not the result of one-strike, Alexandria’s penchant for strictly applying eviction rules led in 1999 to the eviction of a kidney donor whom the city found staying in a friend’s public housing unit. Andrew Cuomo, then secretary of housing and urban development, leased the woman an affordable townhouse unit in the District of Columbia.) The Chicago Reporter wrote in September that 86 percent of Chicago’s one-strike evictions last year did not arise from criminal activity by the person named on the lease.
“These policies, the effect of them on children, families, women, families of color, were not thought through. And I think now a national conversation is beginning to rethink that,” said Ariela Migdal, a senior staff attorney with the Women’s Rights Project of the American Civil Liberties Union. Migdal pointed to a June 2011 letter from HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan to public housing directors, encouraging the directors to use their “broad discretion” to create a flexible set of standards for who will be admitted to and allowed to stay in public housing.
Sometimes I think the war on drugs is really a war on sanity.
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Marcus Ranum
December 28, 2011 at 10:10 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I think the war on drugs is really a war on sanity.
It’s just another way of making sure people are socialized to behave and bow down before the boots and whips of their masters.
Didaktylos
December 28, 2011 at 10:10 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
It’s very simple – poverty causes crime. So, if you’re poor, you are, at the very least, a criminal-in-waiting. Therefore, you must be punished.
leftwingfox
December 28, 2011 at 10:12 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I think there’s better evidence of a wider War on Compassion. Any excuse to knock someone off government assistance, any reason not to support helping others. Any reason to claim someone is not deserving of public help. It’s just a continuation of Reagan’s “Young Bucks buying T-Bones” and “Welfare Queens in Cadillacs”.
No Jobs? You aren’t looking hard enough, cut him off. Grandma getting some incidental pleasure out of her pain medication? Throw her in jail. Billys getting high? Mommy must be supporting his habit, cut her off too.
doktorzoom
December 28, 2011 at 10:14 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Let’s also not forget that, according to the Heritage Foundation and Fox News, owning a color TV, cell phone, or similar luxury items means you’re not really poor.
ibyea
December 28, 2011 at 10:52 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Oh crap. There have been times in which marijuana has been in my parents’ business due to some customers. Of course, my parents try to prevent that from happening, but still… Cops have been on the establishment.
Bronze Dog
December 28, 2011 at 10:53 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Definitely seeing the “war on compassion” part of this as well as the general “war on sanity” that comes from prohibition.
Aquaria
December 28, 2011 at 11:32 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
It’s just a continuation of Reagan’s “Young Bucks buying T-Bones” and “Welfare Queens in Cadillacs”.
::::high five::::
sundoga
December 28, 2011 at 12:12 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
The War on Drugs long since surpassed the drugs themselves as the real problem.
Ellie
December 28, 2011 at 12:22 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
doktorzoom@4
The Heritage Foundation says having a refrigerator and not having to share a toilet with the neighbors means you’re not really poor.
bahrfeldt
December 28, 2011 at 12:37 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
But Charlie Sheen floats merrily onward, whining about people hiding behind fake names.
Modusoperandi
December 28, 2011 at 6:01 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Charlie Sheen? Try your local hospital’s ER doc, part of your government at the local, state and national levels, and investment banks’ whole trading floors.
Remember kids, do speed and go to jail. Do coke and make connections.