Kimberly Preston of Crescent Park has a similar story. She faced eviction two years ago after her 16-year-old son was put in juvenile hall for two days. He had been standing outside with a group of teenage boys in the projects when the police arrived and began looking for drugs. Preston says that the police found no drugs on her son, but they did find a wad of cash in his pocket -- money, Preston contends, that she had just given him to go shopping. Nearby, however, the police found a ball of crack in the ivy. While her son was never charged with a crime, Preston was told to move a few weeks later. With the assistance of the Eviction Defense Fund, she battled the eviction and eventually won.

"They try to put you out on anything!" she complains. "It was the first time they'd ever talked to me." She says the authorities are focusing on the wrong people, and should be nailing the itinerant dealers who hang out in Crescent Park instead of putting out employed mothers like herself: "The whole place is infested: killings, murders, all kinds of things. They call this the G Lot -- the gangster lot."

Preston and other housing project residents concede that One Strike has had some measurable impact. Drug use and crime have been reduced, says Preston, as the most egregious families have been booted out of the buildings. But, she says, the same effect could be achieved by the police, if they would do their jobs. And eviction doesn't remove a drug dealer from the premises, say Preston and other residents. Even if they no longer live there, they still hang around. Within the 14 units in her courtyard, says Preston, four mothers have been evicted because of their children's drugs and crime. And yet even after their families were evicted, the kids that were making trouble are still hanging around the projects, she claims.

"Even though they put these people out, I still see them roaming around: They have a nice place to do their business," she says. "It's ridiculous. Lock their ass up and put them away and then you won't have a problem. But if you just put the family out, the kids still come back. They don't care."

One goal of the One Strike law was to give some teeth to parental discipline, to inflict the fear of eviction on kids tempted to break the law. As Gresley describes it, "Youth respond to having rules and discipline and a consistent set of expectations; perhaps having it clear what the housing authority will tolerate will assist grandparents in controlling their grandkids." But, as Preston points out, the penalty seems to have more of an impact of adults than kids. What is needed more than punishment is distraction, she says.

Eubanks says that the main task of GrandFamilies has been to provide grandparent-helmed families with diversions for aimless teenagers. "We need to keep the kids occupied with activities and provide respite services for grandparents who can't take the kids out," he says. "We need more supportive programs and after-school activities; homework centers and tutorials -- activities that will let the kids learn rather than just being punitive. If the grandparents end up on the street, the kids end up in foster care."

But the dearth of funded activities, many of them part of the Public Housing Drug Elimination Program that Bush killed last year, means that the majority of kids hanging around the projects have few alternatives. Meanwhile, more and more families, driven by rising rents, are packing into the subsidized apartments, further increasing the odds that evictions will start to rise. Sunia Zaterman says that in many cities, particularly large ones, the housing markets are so tight that there is considerable amount of doubling up. Much of it, says Zaterman, is unnoticed by housing authorities.

"People that can't afford market rent and have nowhere else to go often move in with family members," she says. "You've got people in the household not on the lease, or not directly members of the family, and not allowed to live there."

Housing projects represent shelter of the last resort. The alternative is usually the street. When families in public housing take in family members, many of them troubled or in trouble, they do so as an act of kindness. And if the reward for this act of charity is a greater threat of eviction, many more people will be on the street -- forced there because their relatives can't afford the risk of taking them in. Ultimately, say advocates for residents of public housing, this will cost more money and destroy families. Surely, for an administration that favors less spending and stronger family values, this is not a good thing.

Is it possible for any parents, whether they live in a gated community or a housing project, to completely control their kids or their kids' friends, effectively stopping them from trying drugs or participating in any illegal behavior? Says Jim Grow, an attorney at the National Housing Law Project, "This is everybody's life in modern America. Yes, you can do what you can do as a parent to try to educate your children and teach them to be responsible about drugs and criminal activity. But we don't always succeed as parents."

Just ask Jeb and George Bush. If the actions of their children had been subject to the One Strike law, much of the Bush family would be homeless. And maybe they should be. After all, they live, for the moment, in public housing.

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