Making Public Housing Safe : HUD chief outlines ways to screen tenants, get rid of criminals

Life in public housing can be a nightmare. Gangsters threaten law-abiding residents. Drug-pushers fight over turf. Gunfire is routine. Childhood is a dangerous time.

President Clinton promised to make public housing safer in his State of the Union speech, and Housing and Urban Development Secretary Henry G. Cisneros is trying to make good on that promise.

To reduce crime in the worst developments, the administration is considering a tough “One Strike and You’re Out” eviction policy designed to rid the nation’s public housing of criminals who treat too many projects like private hangouts. If implemented aggressively, this new policy would make all public housing much safer for poor women and children and senior citizens who can’t afford to live anywhere else.

The current eviction policy tends to favor residents and individual rights. Public housing is not a right. Nor is it an entitlement available to anyone who qualifies, based on low income. It is a limited government program that should be reserved for those who will abide by the law.

To clean up crime-ridden developments, Cisneros wants to increase the screening of potential tenants. Toughened admissions standards would include criminal background checks. Similar standards are common in coveted affordable-housing developments run by nonprofit groups.

While screening out drugs and gangs, the feds hope to screen in working families. Such families lived in public housing decades ago, but only temporarily, until they could afford better. Though residents can earn up to 80% of an area’s median income and still qualify for this housing, preference is given to the poorest of the poor and the homeless.

Only 9% of residents now in public housing have income from jobs. Most depend on Social Security checks, disability payments or welfare benefits. The new policies would encourage public housing residents to go to work. Their rents would not rise and they would be able to keep their additional income without penalty for 18 months, similar to welfare mothers who are allowed to keep more of their wages without losing government aid as an incentive to get off Aid to Families With Dependent Children. Incentives like these are good public policy.

The administration’s recommendations, alas, are caught up in Washington’s bitterly partisan budget battle. The HUD appropriation remains in limbo--like the safety of many families who live in public housing.