March 26, 2002
From the desk of Jane Galt:Strike a blow for common
Strike a blow for common sense: Yes, you can evict drug users from public housing.
Now, followers of this page will know that I am in favor of legalizing drugs. All of 'em. Don't care how much they weigh, what class they are, or to what extent they resemble or do not resemble crack cocaine. Take the laws off the books.
However, given that the laws are still on the books, drug use is accompanied by a great deal of other crime and anti-social behavior. And unlike other people, the other residents of the housing projects can't move away from trouble; they're stuck with whatever the government chooses to let live there. I'm always entranced by the thought of forcing the ACLU lawyers who argue these cases to live next door to the tenants they're willing to inflict on our minimum wage workers.
Predictably, poverty advocates are screaming that this is discrimination. Wake up, Moonshine; the sixties are over. The problems of the poor today are no longer lack of the basic necessities for survival; the problems of the poor can be divided into three categories: lack of status goods (Wal-Mart sneakers instead of Nikes); their own behavioral problems, for which they lack the safety net that middle class status affords; and the behavior problems of other poor people with whom the government forces them to live. We have a choice between guaranteeing, for those at the bottom, either a respectable if not glamorous standard of life for those who choose to live respectably; or squalor for everyone. There is no way of both guaranteeing everyone a place to live, and making the places that we offer to the less fortunate meet a minimum standard of decency; the two aims are mutually exclusive, because the essential problem with many of these places is the tenants. Not all of the tenants; just a significant minority that make it unliveable for anyone else. (I realize we have a third option, which is to bulldoze the places, but that's another discussion) While personally I'd like to see drugs decriminalized, I still heartily endorse the principle that we can kick criminals out of public housing, even if they're not the primary tenant.
Posted by Jane Galt at March 26, 2002 6:31 PM | TrackBack | Technorati inbound links