Court crimps drug war housing policy

Every person alive today knows there's a druggie hiding under every bed in the known universe. They know this because Congress said so.

Why, that storage bin under your bed that's full of old Power Mac software actually isn't a storage bin. It's a druggie ingeniously disguised as a storage bin. Did you know that?

But seriously now.

A government policy that gained height in the '90s evicted public housing residents if they had a relative who had even minimal drug involvement - even if the resident was unaware of what their relative did. It was a "one strike" policy that gutted due process.

For a while, agents were conducting warrantless searches of public housing in search of contraband left behind by family members.

These militant policies were courtesy of the right-wing Republican Congress of the time and of the Clinton regime. (What's this again about a two-party system?)

But now, several courts have ruled against efforts by housing authorities in Covington, Kentucky, to evict residents who are unaware of relatives' drug involvement.

The case resulted when a resident was evicted after her nephew who was visiting left cocaine in the apartment - without her knowledge. The resident was ordered to move out in only 14 days under this "one strike" rule - even though she had nothing to do with her nephew's drug offenses. In fact, she didn't even know about the drugs or the arrest until she got the eviction notice.

But local judges quite properly ruled in her favor and said she was wrongly evicted. Now the Kentucky Court of Appeals has upheld these rulings.

The court said that not only did the eviction violate the housing agreement - but authorities didn't even bother to show that the resident did anything illegal herself.

That this "one strike" policy was being wielded against innocents is another sign that the failed War on Drugs is out of control. Instead of using due process and common sense, authorities went off half-cocked. At least the court saw through the bullshit.

(In case you're asking, the comment section of the Cincinnati paper has already been flooded by Freeper-like bigoted commenters.)

(Source: http://nky.cincinnati.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/AB/20090529/NEWS0107/905300350)