Tough Love vs. Civil Rights: Housing Project’s Dilemma : Homeless: A Spokane, Wash., building was refurbished in April. It now mirrors the blight of its neighborhood.

When the Commercial Building opened its doors in April to house the homeless, it was a building with an attitude: No drugs. No alcohol. No going out on the street late at night. And no overnight guests without advance approval.

For the management of the $2.6-million federally subsidized apartment building, it was a way of offering tenants a kind of tough love to help get their fractured lives back on track: a clean, well-lighted refuge in the middle of Skid Row. But for some of the tenants, it was a little too much Big Brother.

They sued in May to throw out the rules and won. Now to walk through the hallways of the Commercial Building is to walk the sad corridors of what might have been. Launched on April 1 with a fanfare of new carpeting, clean kitchens and cable TV, it is beginning to look like many of its shabby neighbors in this rough part of town: urine on the bathroom floors, dirty dishes flowing over the sinks, vomit on the stairways.

Almost no one--not the community that pulled together to develop the project, not the federal government that subsidized the rent, not the lawyers who challenged the regulations, and especially not the tenants who live there--is happy with the way it turned out.

“To have 49 people in our building doing whatever they do in the streets with what we’ve created here is a waste of everybody’s time and effort. We can’t afford it as a society,” complained Jim Delegans, one of the building’s owners. “It’s typical of our era. A lot of people have expressed a lot of sympathy, but it takes a lot more than that to change the way government works.”

As public housing programs across the country battled growing disenchantment and shrinking government subsidies, Spokane persuaded Washington Water & Power Co. to help turn the Commercial Building into a modern apartment complex for the homeless who had been living on the edge of desperation in the city’s rescue missions.

The Commercial Building’s management sought to make sure the building didn’t deteriorate into a crime-infested mirror of the neighborhood around it. Tenants were offered clean, renovated rooms; cheery day rooms with cable TV; clean community bathrooms and kitchens, and free bedding, pots and pans. The federal Department of Housing and Urban Development subsidized the rent, even footing the entire amount for many tenants.

In exchange, tenants signed a lease in which they agreed not to use drugs, alcohol, guns or prostitutes. The regulations carried with them some tough enforcement mechanisms. Tenants had to agree to Breathalyzer or urine tests and to go to detoxification facilities immediately if found to be intoxicated. Those who refused were summarily evicted. Doors were locked at midnight and a curfew was strictly enforced. Overnight guests were allowed only with prior approval of the management. Tenants who violated the rules were out on the street.

The problem, said tenants who challenged the rules, was that while these kind of regulations might be endurable in a transitional living facility for drug addicts or alcoholics, they were tough to take in a standard permanent housing facility. Since when could the landlord tell you what time to go to bed, when you could go out in the evening, or order you to attend three alcohol counseling meetings a week?

Tenants complained that building managers were entering their rooms unannounced with passkeys and ordering sleeping residents out of the building if they smelled of alcohol.

Tenants were refused keys to the outer doors and rendered homeless for the night if they weren’t in by curfew.

“The assumption that’s made is that everybody who’s a resident of that facility is somehow disabled. That’s a real problem when you start making assumptions about who people are, what their conditions are, particularly when you lack the training or insight to make those judgments,” said James A. Bamberger, executive director of Spokane Legal Services Center, whose challenge threw out the rules after HUD suspended all rent subsidies.

“You’re a displaced homemaker. You’re a victim of domestic violence. You have no resources, you’re out on the street. You get referred to the Commercial Building. And now you have to do mandatory urinalysis, now you have to let someone in your room with a passkey, now you have to go to detox any time you have a drink? Rationality and judgment are thrown out the window.”

Attorneys who brought the challenge say they have no objection to rules providing for a drug-, alcohol-, and weapons-free environment. Indeed, many of their clients might benefit from such rules. But they say the building managers are obligated to conform with state landlord-tenant laws and federal due-process guarantees in enforcing them. Instead of summarily throwing residents out on the street, they say, the managers should give them the kind of notices and hearings required by law.

Tenants living in an apartment should be allowed to go out at night, and they should not have to fear the landlord barging in while they sleep, the attorneys insisted.

“We have indicated consistently that we support virtually all of the goals they have,” said Legal Services attorney Thomas Tremaine. “But we don’t say that simply because your housing unit is subsidized by public dollars you have waived your whole panoply of civil rights.”

The case has caused an uproar on the talk radio circuit, where conservative program hosts say the federal government is saying you can’t discriminate against drug addicts and alcoholics.

“This, ladies and gentlemen, is an outrage. We’re not talking about the Hyatt Regency or the Ritz-Carlton. We’re talking about an area of town where you have to take radical steps to make things work,” declared Rick Roberts, whose “Attitude in the Heartland” program took on HUD over the Kansas City, Mo., airwaves last month.

“These people were doing it, until the government stepped in and said: ‘No, who the hell do you think you are, discriminating against drug addicts?’ This is their turf! . . . Marijuana, urine, excrement found on the floors, night managers threatened by tenants. Thank you, Uncle Sam!” Roberts raged. “One Spokane attorney called the rules martial law. Oh, Jesus!”

Ann Finke, the building manager who drew up the regulations, said the reality is that nearly all the tenants are alcoholics and drug addicts from the streets. They need tough rules to get their lives back together, she said.

“These people just came out of rehab or [from] under a bridge. . . . The idea was supposed to be to rehabilitate these guys, help them, get them off the street,bring them back to where they’re productive in society,” she said. “I’ve worked in this kind of environment. I know the way these people think and what you need to maintain order around here.”

The tenants, she conceded, “didn’t like any of the rules. They don’t want to be told what to do, when to do it, when they can have visitors. And according to the law, we’re violating their civil rights. They’re saying these guys can come and go as they please, bring prostitutes in here, bring drug dealers in here. If you’ve got a guy next door who’s trying to get clean and sober, and you’ve got somebody bringing in a six-pack and getting high, you’re jeopardizing [the neighbor’s] ability to stay clean, make something of his life.”

Most of the tenants who supported the regulations have moved out since the rules were suspended under a consent decree signed with the court May 19. A few have hung on and say the place has gone to pot.

There was a fire in one of the bathrooms three weeks ago. Last week the candy machine was upended. Filth has crept in. Prostitutes parade through the rooms.

Terry Magin, 25, said he was threatened by a drunken tenant who held a meat cleaver to his throat last week. The management hasn’t been able to evict the man since the rules were thrown out, and Magin lives in fear he’ll meet up with him again in the hall.

Don Chandler, 62, who ended up in the building after several years of not being able to find a job, said he is “disgusted” with most of the tenants who challenged the regulations.

“Mothers and fathers set rules for their kids. We came here because we had a need for being here, and when we signed up, they explained the rules. Nobody is forcing us to stay here. How can you expect the taxpayers of this state to let you lay up here and do nothing except what you want to do, and the taxpayers foot the bill?” Chandler said.

Finke, who spends most of her time sitting at her desk these days, said she feels frustration growing into anger. “These people came here with nothing but the clothes on their backs. But it’s not about ‘thank you’ anymore. It’s what else can you get me? We give them free towels, but I want more towels because I don’t want to do the laundry. And the laundry is free! We even supply the soap! What more do they want?”

Housing officials and legal-aid lawyers say the Commercial Building is falling into ruin because its owners have adopted an all-or-nothing policy of not enforcing any rules if they can’t enforce the ones they want. They point to several other public housing projects in Spokane and elsewhere that are successfully imposing drug- and alcohol-free limits on a cooperative basis with their tenants and following legal administrative procedures before evicting anyone.

“Rule enforcement cannot be done unilaterally and capriciously, based on intimidation and fear,” the owner of several such projects, Mick McDowell, wrote in the Spokane Spokesman-Review. “Sensitivity, objectivity and consistency are all part of what it takes to provide a safe, secure building.”

But Delegans fumes quietly. “We want to see some kind of change in the way public housing is handled in this country. You look at the biggest slums in this country, and 99% of them are public housing. Something is wrong.”

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The House Rules

Here are some of the 37 rules tenants had to agree to in writing:

* No drugs, alcohol or weapons are permitted in the building.

* A tenant under the influence will surrender the room keys to the manager, be removed from the building and sent to a detox center for 72 hours.

* Tenants are required to undergo testing for drugs and alcohol, at the manager’s request. Refusal is cause for automatic eviction.

* A tenant must request a written pass from the manager at least 24 hours in advance to be allowed outside the building after curfew.

* Tenants cannot be at any location where alcohol consumption is the primary activity, or where illegal drugs or drug dealing exists.

* Each week the tenant must attend at least three Alcoholics Anonymous or other applicable counseling meetings.