Protecting the Projects

As part of his broader drug-control strategy, President Bush wants to spend $50 million sweeping drugs and dealers out of public housing projects. The violence that drugs breed has reached nightmarish levels in many housing projects and warrants serious federal attention.

To pay for the fight against crime, the federal budget director has suggested shifting dollars from scarce public-housing operating funds. That is not sound strategy. Maintenance needs are severe in the aging projects. The battle against crack cocaine should not be fought at the expense of other critical services, such as maintenance, renovation and staff in low-income housing.

Crime and drugs infest many big-city housing projects but there are ways to cope, as visiting housing directors from Chicago, New York and Seattle--plus the former director in Houston--report. They emphasize law enforcement, but they also stress programs for children under the age of 5 and the need for more affordable housing.

Public housing can provide an oasis for poor families, and it need not be synonymous with drugs, gangs and violence in South-Central Los Angeles or anywhere else. A show of police strength, tougher regulations, speedier evictions and security fences are steps that work toward gaining control at the most troubled housing projects.

Chicago fences 16 buildings of public housing and uses security gates to keep an edge against gang members. Surprise inspections ferret out people who don’t belong in the buildings. Crime--from gunfire to graffiti--has gone down at several projects, according to Vincent Lane, the Chicago housing director, and children can play on the playgrounds without being caught in the cross-fire. Similar fences are planned in Los Angeles.

In New York, the housing authority depends on a show of strength from police and is slowly using federal forfeiture laws to evict tenants arrested on charges of selling drugs. Tenants can report drug activity anonymously, and are encouraged to fight for decent housing. Their children are given T-shirts and comic books with anti-drug messages.

In Seattle, housing officials rely on computers to keep track of authorized occupants, rent payments, warnings and other documentation that can be used to support quick evictions. Although gang activity is increasing, there is no separate housing police force.

In Los Angeles, a small housing police force patrols 30,000 tenants who live in 8,500 units at 21 projects. It is dangerous work. At least 40 active gangs have been identified at various projects and the worst complexes are supermarkets for illicit drugs. Law-abiding tenants--primarily single mothers and their young children--need greater protection.

The Los Angeles Police Department is assigning foot patrols to six housing projects starting with Jordan Downs in Watts today. Orange County has no public housing as such, but Santa Ana police have found foot patrols effective in suppressing drug dealing in high-crime areas of that city.

President Bush is right to insist on stopping the terror and restoring order in the nation’s beleaguered public housing. Stronger law enforcement represents a fraction of that monumental task.