
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, June 26, 1990                   TAG: 9006260330
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: B-2   EDITION: STATE 
SOURCE: By Associated Press
DATELINE: RICHMOND                                LENGTH: Medium

JUDGE HALTS EVICTIONS OF PUBLIC HOUSING TENANTS

A federal judge in Richmond has halted the government's plans to evict public housing tenants suspected of drug involvement in two dozen target cities throughout the country.

In an order late Friday, U.S. District Judge Richard Williams demanded that the federal government give tenants "proper notice and an opportunity to be heard in court" before seizing their leases.

Williams earlier in the week had issued a temporary injunction against summary lease-taking in eastern Virginia. On Friday, he extended his order to the rest of the country.

"We're pleased at the judge's ruling. We say, thank God for justice," said Alma Barlow, president of the Richmond Tenants Association.

Barlow's group sued the government earlier this month after learning that Richmond's public housing would be targeted as part of the federal crackdown. The departments of Justice and Housing and Urban Development have not released a list of the target cities, but police and local housing officials have confirmed that Richmond was among them.

Assistant U.S. Attorney G. Wingate Grant said the government would not appeal the ruling.

The planned crackdown, formally called the National Public Housing Asset Forfeiture Project, was based on a 1987 federal law allowing seizure of drug suspects' real estate, even before trial. In the case of public housing tenants, the assets seized would be apartment leases.

Critics, including the American Bar Association and the American Civil Liberties Union, said the plan amounted to government punishment without due process of law.

"It's absolutely unconstitutional," said Florence Roisman, a lawyer with the National Housing Law Project.

Roisman said the government should use regular criminal law against drug suspects instead of trying to kick them out of their homes.

"If they think there are bad actors there, get a warrant and arrest them," she said.

Williams' order does not prohibit every summary lease-taking. It allows the "immediate eviction of household members in exigent circumstances."

The order does not detail what situation would be "exigent."

by CNB