Last June, 13-year-old Jermaine Taylor and three of his friends set off household chemicals in a plastic bottle at Southwind public housing in Aurora.
Within three months, mother Mary Taylor, who lives there in a five-bedroom house with three children and four grandchildren, received an eviction notice from the Aurora Housing Authority.
She’s fighting it in court. If she loses, she will be out of the home where she has lived for 16 years. “I’ll do whatever I have to do to stay in my home,” said Taylor, 44.
Taylor is one of a number of Aurora public housing residents who have been evicted or who face eviction because of a stringently enforced zero-tolerance policy. Tenants and advocates for public housing and the homeless are critical of the policy, but city and AHA officials counter that it has drastically reduced crime.
In 2002, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled that local housing authorities had the right, under a federal zero-tolerance policy, to evict public housing tenants if anyone living with or visiting that tenant used drugs on or near their home. In Aurora, the zero-tolerance policy has been extended beyond drug use to include all violent crime, whether actual or threatened, said David Kramer, AHA deputy executive director.
Charles Petroff, an attorney who focuses on housing for the Chicago Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law Inc., a non-profit consortium of 44 city law firms, said, “It appears that Aurora is among the harshest in their application [of zero tolerance].” In Chicago and Cook County, “they display more willingness to look at what happened,” he said.
The Supreme Court ruling left the decision of when to enforce zero tolerance in the hands of local housing authorities. “In Aurora, they don’t seem to be using any discretion,” Petroff said.
Though most housing advocates believe the high court ruling would extend legally to violent activity, “what defines violent activity is another question,” he said.
The Aurora Housing Authority also includes violations of leases and regulations as grounds for eviction, said authority Executive Director Rick Brace. “We may be more aggressive than others, but that’s the political climate in Aurora, and we are appointed officials,” he said. “… We have rules and regulations we follow, just like private landlords would follow.”
Mayor David Stover, who appoints members to the authority’s board, supports the zero-tolerance policy, enacted in 1995.
Before that, Aurora Housing Authority properties were considered high-crime areas, said Stover, a former city police chief. Children did homework in bathtubs so they would be safe from random gunfire, and when police were called to the complexes, no fewer than four and often up to a dozen officers were dispatched, he said.
`It doesn’t cross the line’
“If it’s unsafe for the police to be there, how must it be for the people who live there 24-7, so you must come to a hard-and-fast position that protects 90 percent of the people living there,” Stover said. “Ninety percent of the residents there were good people just trying to survive, but 10 percent were making it miserable for them.”
That led to the zero-tolerance policy, Stover said. “Does it bump up against constitutional issues?” he asked. “Yes, sometimes it does, but it doesn’t cross the line.”
Kramer said zero tolerance, along with community policing and other efforts, has reduced crime on Aurora Housing Authority property by 85 percent over the last five years. There hasn’t been a shooting at an authority complex in two years, and it’s been five years since the last murder, he said.
“Our objective is to protect the residents who are doing nothing wrong and have a right to live in safety,” he said.
“They need these tools, like zero tolerance, to create this vastly improved environment,” Aurora Police Chief William Lawler said.
Housing advocate critical
Cynthia Ralls–the co-founder of JUST Housing, an advocacy group–questioned whether the zero-tolerance policy went further than needed to reduce crime. And she pointed to high vacancy rates at Aurora Housing Authority properties as one consequence.
Authority officials said the authority does have a higher vacancy rate than called for by federal housing guidelines, but some of its units are being remodeled. By February, 28 units will be finished, Brace said.
Brace said the authority evicts about five or six tenants a month under zero tolerance and lease or rule violations, and a few others leave each month after they decide not to fight an eviction notice.
Richard Irvin, Taylor’s attorney in the eviction case, said he believes targeting Taylor because her son set off a homemade bomb is an example of the authority going too far.
Police did not charge Jermaine Taylor but had him take part in the Kane County Juvenile Court Alternative Program, a 10-week public service and educational regimen from which he graduated Dec. 16, Irvin said.
“I absolutely agree with zero tolerance, but we’re talking about serious crime, talking about the serious criminals, not kids who are out playing,” Irvin said.
“I’m the first person to stand in line and say we need to reduce crime in our low-income areas,” he said. “There are ways to do it effectively where we don’t put people out of their homes.”
