Am I My Mother's Keeper? the Case against the Use of Juvenile Arrest Records in One-Strike Public Housing Evictions

I. INTRODUCTION In Old Testament, Genesis, chapter 4, verse 9 reads: the Lord said to Cain, 'Where is your brother Abel?' ? don't know,' he replied. 'Am I my brother's keeper?'1 Cain's response implies that to know his brother's whereabouts indicates some responsibility for him. By analogy, a public housing authority's reliance a minor's arrest record to commence an eviction against his family in effect makes child responsible for his family, which begs question Am I my mother's keeper? Advocates of a one-strike eviction policy, which encourages evictions of entire families basis of one household member's or guest's activity,2 would answer yes. When a housing authority initiates an eviction basis of alleged acts of child, parent is often put in difficult position of either having to force her child out of home or lose housing for entire family.3 In 1996, when President Clinton unveiled his One-Strike and You're Out strategy to reduce crime in public housing through evictions, he remarked, There is no reason in world to put rights of a before those of a child who wants to grow up safe or a parent who wants to raise that child in an environment where child is safe, in no danger of being shot down in a gang war, and can't be stolen away by drug addiction.4 While many would agree with this statement, it ignores effect that one-strike policy has families when alleged criminal is a child. Furthermore, it overlooks difficulty of separating problem of crime in public housing from innocent tenants who live there. Instead, policy represents a catchall solution premised idea that those who cannot control behavior of other household members, namely their children, or guests in their homes, are themselves a threat to well-being of their neighbors. Scholar Susan Popkin explains that past crime-prevention initiatives by Chicago Housing Authority5 (CHA) have failed by unrealistically assuming that public housing residents can work together to challenge a common, outside enemy.6 The transformation that CHA has undergone since its inception is instructive. Pursuant to United States Housing Act of 1937,7 Chicago Housing Authority was established to provide temporary housing for low-income people unable to afford 'decent, safe and sanitary dwellings' in private market.8 During CHA's early years, its directors envisioned Teplacflng] slum housing, for both poor whites and poor blacks, with better apartments in good neighborhoods.9 However, developments that exist today can fairly be categorized as slum housing for poor blacks in crime-ridden neighborhoods. The majority of housing was built in poor, black neighborhoods, and residents were separated from other parts of city by expressways or subway lines, resulting in unimaginable geographic concentrations of poverty.10 With alarming increase in violent crime that began in late 1970s and physical deterioration of housing stock, public housing in Chicago came to be regarded as the housing of last resort.12 Today, CHA is country's third largest public housing agency (PHA) consisting of seventeen family developments totaling close to forty thousand units.13 Near end of year 2000, approximately sixty percent of these units were occupied.14 Ninety-seven percent of Chicago's public housing is inhabited by African-Americans.15 Ninety percent of public housing households are on welfare and made up of African-American, single women.16 Only six percent of families are headed by married couples.17 In CHA Rockwell development Chicago's West Side, more than sixty percent of residents are nineteen and younger.18 The design of most of these artificially created communities, high-rises surrounded by large open spaces,'9 invited occupation by gangs and drug dealers. …