Should public housing residents be drug tested?

Sounds pretty reasonable, right? Here’s a woman who cares about her community and wants to get rid of drug abuse. Hard to argue with that.

But earlier in the day, I had gotten a call from someone else, a woman named Susie Thomas. Thomas seemed very upset and was relieved to hear that I was coming to the comment hearing.

“Why should they test us?” she asked me. “Just because we live in public housing, we supposed to be criminals? Don’t we have a right to privacy?”

Hmmm, I said. An intelligent response.

The truth was, I didn’t know. I knew that several mixed-income communities, like Lake Park Crescent and Oakwood Shores – the two Newsome speaks of – drug tested all of their residents. The committee that planned the developments agreed upon it, residents included. I had never heard anyone complain about it.

But I thought back to my college con law course. Was drug testing residents an unreasonable search and seizure?

Yes, says Adam Schwartz of the Illinois ACLU.

“The fourth amendment to the Constitution guarantees us freedom from unreasonable search and seizure,” he said. “Tenants shouldn’t have to accept an invasion of privacy in order to receive a government benefit.”

I was a little skeptical. They live in government housing – doesn’t the government have the right to control what happens there?

Well, yes, Adam said. The ACLU says controlling crime is an important government interest, and the government should do what it can to prevent it.

But giving up your constitutional rights shouldn’t be a condition of participating in a government program.

What if every homeowner had to take a drug test in order to deduct the interest from their
mortgage off their income taxes? That’s a government subsidy, he said.

Oh, I said. Hmmm.

He gave me some case law to back it up.

There haven’t been any specific cases about drug testing in public housing, but there’s some similar cases. In 2003, the sixth circuit court of appeals struck down a Michigan law that required drug testing for welfare recipients (Marchwinski v. Howard). Another case struck down a law that required drug testing as a requirement for running for office in Georgia. And a third case, the most outrageous by far, outlawed a practice of drug testing women who
were pregnant in a public hospital without their knowledge and then arresting them if they tested positive.

Protecting the public safety is a big deal, said Adam. But so is protecting people’s right not to be treated as a criminal if they’ve done nothing wrong.

Rose Ballard agrees.

She just moved into Lake Parc
Place in May and came to the Tuesday night hearing to find out what was going on.

“I think that it’s a violation of my right to privacy,” says Ballard. “If I don’t agree to it, then I’m not lease
compliant – that’s a violation of my rights.”

What does the Chicago Housing Authority think? I asked Matt Aguilar, the CHA spokesman, if agency thought drug testing was an unreasonable search and seizure.

“No,” he said.

That was all I got. Although, to be fair, every word that comes out of the CHA has to be vetted by like 50 public officials. Wenmay have a statement by next Tuesday.

Then I started thinking about those communities where drug testing already happens. If everyone agrees to it, does that make drug testing okay?

“No,” Adam said when I called back. “No one should have to do a drug test as a condition of obtaining a housing benefit whether it’s a government owned unit or built with a government subsidy a middle class person who’s getting a $5,000 tax break on their mortgage interest.”

Oh yeah. We covered that already.

Plus, it’s tough to see if any of the residents of Lake Parc Place agreed.

The CHA press release on the matter states, “After months of discussion between residents, community leaders and neighbors about how to improve conditions at Lake Parc Place, the Chicago Housing Authority has agreed to propose more stringent screening policies for tenants there.”

But none of the resident leaders I talked to Tuesday night said they had anything to do with this new regulation.

And when I asked Matt for specific names of who they talked to, he told me, “As a general rule, we do not disclose residents names.” That makes sense. The government shouldn’t be giving out the names of citizens receiving benefits, but it makes it tough to figure out just who was consulted about these new rules.

When I first heard about these regulations, they seemed pretty normal and acceptable to me. Drug tests are sort of routine. Plus, aren’t poor people more likely to use drugs?

Well, it turns out, I’m sort of wrong on all accounts here.

According to a 1997 report of by the National Institute of Health, about the same percentage of people use drugs across the U.S. population, whether they’re on welfare or not.

Even in kids, there’s not much of a
difference. Take a look at this graph from the 2004 National Survey on Drug Use and Health. More low-income kids use drugs, but not much more. Especially when you look at alcohol, the main drug of choice for Americans which urine drug tests don’t even test for, it’s pretty much even.

Residents also said they were told that a rise in drug crimes in the neighborhood was behind this new policy. If there was a significant rise in crime, it could be considered a factor in weighing people’s right to privacy to public safety (although Matt Aguilar says this was not the reason the policy is being implemented).

So I looked at the crime stats for the 8 blocks around Lake Parc Place
over the last year and a half. Rise in drug crime?

No again. In fact,it looks like there’s less drug crime and even crime overall than compared with last year.

All of this led me to ask even more questions. Awhile ago, I wrote that putting more security cameras up doesn’t take away the reasons that people commit crimes. Would drug testing take away the reason people do drugs?

Maybe, but I don’t think so. Some people do drugs just for fun. But even in the process, many people become addicted. And people will do some crazy-ass things when they’re addicted. Peeing in a cup isn’t likely to be much of a deterrent when your brain is telling you to get your fix or you’re going to die.

And Rose Ballard pointed out to me that eviction is a pretty lousy response to addiction.

“It’s a sickness. A medical illness, right?” she said. “So you have to treat it.”

When I started reporting this story, I was sort of indifferent to drug testing. And in the process, I’ve become pretty irritated at the thought of it. Why should low-income people be targeted for drug testing as if needing a house was correlated with being a criminal?

These problems are more complex than our solutions. Cameras don’t get rid of crime. Drug tests don’t rid people of their addictions. We go around outlawing things because they sound like a good idea, not because we’ve thought expansively about the problems and their potential solutions.

I can sympathize with community advocates like Shirley Newsome who want safer places to live. Crime sucks. Drugs tear apart communities. Kids shouldn’t grow up in a place that’s not safe.

But if we want to get rid of complex problems, shouldn’t we ask for better solutions?