PHOTO/LIEZL ALCANTARA
CHICAGO—June 2 marks the two-year anniversary of the Chicago Housing Authority residents’ Town Hall meeting protest at the Charles Hayes Community Center. That protest was strong enough to defeat unwarranted mandatory drug testing of CHA tenants, but was only partially successful. Drug testing continues for those who live in the newer mixed income developments like the areas that were once part of Cabrini Green.
All 18-year-olds and older in the public housing parts of mixed income buildings are drug tested. This is especially demeaning to the elderly. If you’ve never used drugs, never had a drug problem, never been arrested or convicted of a drug related crime, you are still tested. The powers that be argue that this is a deterrent; a crime fighting tool and a necessary condition because the poor receive the benefits of federally funded housing. Yet, condo dwellers right under the same roof in apartments next door are not tested.
A teenage member of a public housing family in mixed income was accused of smoking pot. The police were called, investigated, and left, saying there was no evidence. That family had to fight tooth and nail to stop their eviction. Around the same time, a man in a condo unit in the same building dropped dead of an overdose from hard drugs and was carried out in a body bag to the morgue. Plenty of evidence, but no eviction was attempted on that family. A drug test may have saved that man’s life.
Unemployed, under-employed, minimum wage, low wage workers living in public housing, still suffering from the recession, are being targeted, criminalized and made homeless, while a free pass is given to the privileged professionals, business owners and bankers in condos.
Speaking of bankers, last December, HSBC Bank was caught laundering drug money. They admitted doing it and yet no one went to jail or even a courtroom. They just paid a fine. This is not surprising since two years earlier, Wachovia Bank and others were caught doing the same thing and they avoided the law buy paying a fine. Government officials said they couldn’t prosecute them in both cases because it would threaten the world economic system.
Wasn’t it the banks that were given trillions of dollars in federal funds to put America back to work?
Unbelievably, mainstream media tried to justify this by reporting that drug money that found its way into these banks was good for the troubled economy.
Instead of getting drugs out of the community, and helping people who have drug habits recover, the CHA is selectively using drugs to get rid of the poor in order to gentrify. If the CHA tenants continue being drug tested, then owners of the private management firms getting CHA contracts and their families, as well condo dwellers should also be tested. Either that or drug test no one.
Whichever way it goes, there must be equality for public housing residents in the mixed income buildings.
