Columbia University Graduate School of Arts & Sciences Human Rights Studies Master of Arts Program Target Practice: On the Intersection of Race, Class, Gender, Public Housing, and “The War On Drugs” George Edward Carpenter III Thesis adviser: Samuel Roberts Submitted in partial fulfillment of the Requirements for the degree of Master of Arts January 2016 © 2016 George Edward Carpenter III All rights reserved ABSTRACT Target Practice: On the Intersection of Race, Class, Gender, Public Housing, and “The War on Drugs” George Edward Carpenter III This thesis analyzes how intersectional failures during the development of drug and public housing policy and law diminish their subjects’ legal and human rights. Racialized narratives developed throughout United States history define both public housing and drug usage. These histories not only morph how the Federal Government perceives public housing as a space and drugs as an object, but also how they change the nature in which government handles both public housing residents and drug users, as subjects of the law. As a result, the actions of Congress in both of these realms have undue negative impact on public housing residents, who are disproportionately people of color. Through War on Drugs acts, which place public housing in the criminal justice system, such as The Anti­Drug Abuse Act of 1988, The Cranston­ Gonzalez National Affordable Housing Act, and The HOPE Act of 1996, public housing residents’ Constitutional rights to due process and privacy have been severely limited. For these people, and for women of color specifically, this lessened rights status has not only limited their access to safe and affordable housing, but has also created a situational reality within which the law takes advantage of them due to their personal identity. Table of Contents I. Introduction 1 II. The Racialization of Public Housing 2 III. Race and The War on Drugs 6 III.1 A Brief History of the Connection Between Race and Drug Use 6 III.2 Racializing Drug Policy in the War on Drugs 8 IV. The Marriage of The War on Drugs and Public Housing 11 IV.1 The Power of Media 12 IV.2 Public Housing and Drug Use Together in Policy 13 IV.2.1 The Anti­Drug Abuse Act of 1988 14 IV.2.2 The Cranston­Gonzalez National Affordable Housing Act and The HOPE Act of 1996 29 IV.2.3 Department of Housing and Urban Development v. Rucker 34 V. The Intersectional Failure of the Punitive Public Housing Program 37 VI. Conclusion 42 4 List of Illustrations Figure 1: “Slums Breed Crime,” by Lester Beal 4 5 Acknowledgements I would first like to think Dr. Patti Minter. Without her beautiful friendship, manifested in both intellectual and emotional support, I would not have had the opportunity to write this thesis. Also, I owe her a massive thank you for the invaluable editorial advice. I would also like to thank my adviser, Dr. Samuel Roberts, for overseeing this thesis and helping to hone my topic. Lastly, I would like to thank my parents, for their continuous support, without which I would not have been able to attend graduate school. 6 Dedicated to the Victims of “The War on Drugs” 7 I. INTRODUCTION As George H.W. Bush prepared to deliver his first nationally­broadcast televised address from the Oval Office on September 5, 1989, a war was raging right outside the White House. At least, that was the narrative he announced to the public. Staring into the camera as he lifted a bag of crack cocaine to eye­level, he declared: This. This is crack cocaine, seized just a few days ago by drug enforcement agents in a park just across the street from the White House. It could have easily been heroin or PCP. It’s as innocent looking as candy. But it’s turning our cities into battle zones, and it’s murdering our children. Let there be no mistake, this stuff is poison.1 In response to this apocalyptic vision, President Bush proposed a massive “National Drug Control Strategy,” which included doubling federal assistance to state and local law enforcement, enlarging the criminal justice system by building more prisons and jails with an increase of $1.5 billion in federal spending, and targeting specifically, with a $50 million budget increase for law enforcement, public housing units.2 For President George H.W. Bush, the War on Drugs was literally a war. Bush’s hyperbolic speech was indicative of the larger War on Drugs strategy that had been picking up steam since the Reagan presidency. Fear­mongering and war metaphors were two of the primary tactics used to not only encourage abstinence from drug use, but also to purport the Reagan, Bush, and Clinton neoliberal political agendas. In keeping with their fervent faith in personal responsibility as the key to social reform, each president pushed for the enactment of draconian drug policy that urged harsher punishments for drug possession and use.3 As many scholars have shown, these effects, which were largely built from racist stereotypes regarding drug use, have had a disproportionate impact on people of color.4 By evolving simultaneously with the criminal justice­oriented War on Drugs, public housing policy, like drug policy, was thrust into the racializing, neoliberal, narrative that 8 Presidents Reagan, Bush, and Clinton bolstered. Inherently linked to the long history of housing discrimination in the United States that racist residential measures including redlining, restrictive covenants, and block busting perpetrated, public housing became a racialized space. In the context of the War on Drugs, these racist practices and policies have created an image of public housing as crime­ridden and degenerate. It was with this image in mind that President Bush listed public housing as one of his primary areas of focus. The co­existence of the War on Drugs with the racialized image of public housing produced the perfect combination of historical timing and political will to spur one of the most direct and brutal state interventions into the lives of people of color. By mapping both the evolution of public housing as a racialized space and the racist foundation of the War on Drugs, revealed through sentencing practices and incarceration rates, this project will discuss how public housing became a prime target for the War on Drugs and the effects that this intersection had on public housing residents. Specifically, section II will focus on the evolution of public housing as a racialized space, thereby serving as the first piece of the narrative that this project will tell. By exploring historical racist stereotypes associated with drug use, section III will then focus on the role of race in the War on Drugs, forming the second important element of this project. Through analysis of legislative history and Congressional Record, section IV will combine the analysis from both sections II and III to explore the extent to which the War on Drugs targeted public housing in policy initiatives and law. Lastly, section V will explore the effects of this policy intersection on the public housing residents themselves. II. THE RACIALIZATION OF PUBLIC HOUSING While most in the 1980s and 1990s considered public housing an apocalyptic vision of lawlessness, it was not always so perceived. In fact, during public housing’s nascent years in the 1930s, it had a more positive public image. However, like most welfare programs, neither the 9 U.S. government nor the U.S. public have embraced public housing wholesale. This unhealthy U.S. skepticism shaped public housing policy and limited its effectiveness as a relief program. This section will briefly chronicle public housing’s turbulent history, focusing specifically on the metamorphic role of race, in order to demonstrate how the space would later become a political and physical target for the War on Drugs. Before the 1940s, government’s interest in housing at the local, state, and federal level, was primarily in enforcing a decent and sanitary standard of living.5 Federal and state governments actively pursued housing interests during the Great Depression. In fact, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt urged in a 1936 speech to a crowd at Roosevelt Park in New York City that more needed to be done: “... we have … neglected the housing problem for all our lower­income groups… we have not yet begun adequately to spend money … to help the families in the overcrowded sections of our cities…”6 Instead of labeling public housing a battle zone, FDR was pressing for more and better public housing. Consequently, in this early context, public housing did not have a reputation as a crime­ridden space, a label reserved for slums. As a piece of United States Housing Authority propaganda depicts, slums, which were seen as breeding places of crime, were the problem, while public housing was the solution.7 10 Figure 1: Lester Beal, "Slums Breed Crime," United States Housing Authority, 1941, accessed March 2, 2015, http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/93509010/. To be clear, public housing, like almost every other U.S. government program during this time, was strictly segregated. In fact, as Peter Marcuse argues in “Interpreting ‘Public Housing’ History,” public housing was a tool used to maintain segregation.8 He cites New York City as an example, where only white individuals were able to live in the Williamsburg Houses, and only black New Yorkers were allowed to live in Harlem River Houses.9 This racist reality ensured that, at least in the early days, public housing avoided racialization. However, as public housing demographics changed, so did peoples’ perception of it. One of the primary engines of demographic change in public housing was the Housing Act of 1949.