Thanks To Lex Pelger for the tip
Truth Out
Legalizing marijuana statewide while upholding a federal ban for low-income tenants only reinforces historic inequities.
While 24 states have passed laws to legalize recreational marijuana, federal law continues to prohibit the plant. This disparity between state and federal laws has grave consequences, not just in terms of the criminal legal system but elsewhere, too: Federally subsidized tenants, including Section 8 and public housing tenants, can be evicted or denied admission for possessing, using or dispensing marijuana — while their neighbors down the block who aren’t federally subsidized may enjoy recreational marijuana without such consequences.
The good news is that in January, Sen. Cory Booker (D-New Jersey) and Rep. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.) introduced a bill, the Marijuana in Federally Assisted Housing Parity Act, to allow federally subsidized housing tenants in marijuana-legal states to access cannabis without the threat of eviction or denial of admission. The bad news is that this bill was previously introduced in 2019 and didn’t advance, presumably because it lacked support.
Marijuana legalization has been a redress for a history of drug laws that disproportionately criminalized Black and Brown people. Legalizing marijuana statewide only for some to reap its recreational, medicinal and business benefits while upholding a federal ban that can result in the eviction of low-income tenants only reinforces that system of inequity. I would know. I’m a tenants’ rights lawyer who spent the first few years of my career exclusively representing public housing and Section 8 tenants in eviction proceedings. What I’ve seen in my career shows why Congress should pass this bill.
During the war on drugs, subsidized housing tenants were targeted for marijuana-related arrests and evictions. Take New York, for example. A 2007 article by researchers found that “since the mid-1990s and into the 2000s, most [marijuana] arrests have been recorded in higher poverty, minority communities outside the lower Manhattan area and by the [New York Police Department’s] policing of low-income housing projects.”
Incarceration rates were higher too. Between 2008 and 2010, incarceration rates in New York City neighborhoods with public housing developments were 4.6 higher than in neighborhoods without any public housing. In other words, subsidized housing residents, the majority of whom are Black and Brown, were surveilled and arrested more than their wealthier, white neighbors for recreational marijuana use. Overall, “Black people are 3.64 times more likely than white people to be arrested for marijuana possession despite comparable marijuana usage rates,” an American Civil Liberties Union study found.
Due to these racially discriminatory police interactions, subsidized housing residents have a long history of successfully suing police departments — like in NYC for purposely patrolling public housing grounds resulting in unlawful arrests, and in Antioch, California, for the targeted harassment of Section 8 tenants. In one prominent federal lawsuit, police officers even revealed they were pressured to make frequent arrests in order to meet quotas. Those demands created a gross incentive for stop-and-frisk practices near public housing grounds to arrest residents who were often presumed guilty because of being Black or Latino, and poor.
The impact of the marijuana laws goes beyond arrests; subsidized housing tenants have been evicted too. In many cases, an arrest was sufficient for a tenant’s eviction even without a conviction. In 2016, in a widely cited law journal article I co-authored, “Innocent Until Proven Guilty?: Examining the Constitutionality of Public Housing Evictions Based on Criminal Activity,” I analyzed the constitutional implications of evicting tenants over a crime that hadn’t even been proven in court.
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Federally Subsidized Tenants Are Being Evicted for Pot Even Where It’s Legal
