Ron Clewer couldn’t believe what he was hearing. A single mom, a black woman in her early 30s, had just told housing authority officials in Rockford, Ill., that she would kick her 15-year-old son out of her apartment if it meant she could keep the place for herself and her two younger children. It happened because private security guards hired by the housing agency had stopped the son, and, when they found he wasn’t carrying identification, searched him. They found the remains of a marijuana joint.
The housing authority sent the mother a notice telling her that, because of locally enforced federal rules that prohibited drug use in public housing, the entire family of four could lose their home, even though the mother had done nothing wrong. In fact, the mother had moved to public housing to keep her children safe after surviving domestic abuse. She requested a hearing to plead her case, which is where her story shook Clewer, who is white. “If you tell me I am going to lose my housing, I am going to make a decision to throw my son out of my house,” Clewer recounts her saying, “because I can’t lose housing for my other two children.” But the housing authority had a zero-tolerance policy, so it evicted the mother and the entire family.
The dire situation wasn’t entirely the son’s fault, says Clewer, who had just taken over as CEO of the Rockford Housing Authority (RHA). Much of the blame lay with the housing authority itself.
[For more on this story by J. BRIAN CHARLES, DANIEL C. VOCK, MIKE MACIA, go to http://www.governing.com/topic...regation-police.html]
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