By Mark T. Sullivan

Tribune Staff Writer

When San Diego police officer Guy Swanger finally persuaded a landlord to evict a tenant whose relatives were running a drug-dealing operation in a duplex in Southeast San Diego last year, he considered his six-month crusade a success. 

But three months later, the 55-year old woman, who received a rent subsidy under a federal housing program called Section 8, had found a new home on West Street and was allowing it to be used as a drug shop.   “It was the same woman,” Swanger, a member of the city’s Walking Enforcement Campaign Against Narcotics team.”We warned her we were going to come after her again, but she didn’t seem to care.  When we went in with a warrant, we found 3 ounces of cocaine.”    They arrested the woman, but the charges against her were dropped because her grandson was the one selling the drugs, Swanger said.

Unfortunately, Swanger’s story is not unusual in what little low-cost housing is available in San Diego.   Landlords, police experts and San Diego Housing Commission staff say there is a widespread problem with tenants who move from one apartment to the next, allow drugs and gang activity to take place in their homes and sometimes destroy entire apartment complexes.

They say it is a vicious cycle that creates havoc for property owners, provides safe heaven for criminals and makes a mockery of federal housing programs.   “It’s a pattern we’ve watched develop over the past few years,” said Jack Walsh, a developer and property manager who specializes in low-income housing.  “A heavy drug dealer or gang member moves in and the good tenants leave.  We’ll evict them from one of our properties only to have them apply at another.  It’s a bad merry-go-round.”

Until recently, there was little that police, landlords or the housing Commission staff could do to break the cycle of itinerant crack houses and gang hideouts.   But in the last year, three groups have begun to act, alone and in concert. Walsh, for example, is setting up a computer service into which concerned landlords can feed information about tenants they have evicted and why.    “If a person comes in to apply,” Walsh said, “the landlord gets his name and Social Security number, then runs them through the computer looking for past problems.  It will be updated monthly.” 

Phillip Bonham and Scott Silverman, two Southeast San Diego property owners, started “Management Alert Group, Ltd.,” an 80 member organization that meets monthly to share information on how to work with police and the Housing Commission to get rid of bad tenants.

“Our attitude is we’re not going to solve the drug problem,” Bonham said as he walked around complexes along National Avenue that have been devastated by the crack trade and gang wars.  “But we’re going to make sure it doesn’t occur on our property.  We try to encourage them to create an atmosphere that’s not conducive to gangs or drugs.”

In many of the apartment complexes Bonham walked through recently, the windows were boarded up.  The glass had been shot out in drive-by shootings.  In others, walls between units had been knocked down to allow dealers to escape when police make raids.    Bonham’s approach is to work with police and tenants to turn a complex around.  “It’s pretty simple,” Bonham said.  “We don’t tolerate drugs.  And we tell the tenants that.  If they tolerate that, we evict them.”    It’s an approach that police encourage.  The fewer places that allow tenants with a history of drugs or gangs to rent, the fewer problems the police think they will have in Southeast San Diego.

“We’re trying to look for ways to intervene in the cycle,” said Nancy McPherson, a consultant who is administering a Justice Department grant designed to help police take different approaches to solving crime.  “We want to get the landlord first to say this person is a problem, and you should know about it.”

McPherson and Bonham said that the fact that many bad tenants receive subsidies from the federal government under Section 8 makes it tough to break the system.  Some landlords, they said, assume that the Housing Commission screens the tenants for problems, so they  don’t have to worry.

Under Section 8, tenants pay one-third of their monthly income to the landlord and the government picks up the remainder of the rent.  For many of the landlords, the sight of a Section 8 certificate or voucher is money in the bank, despite the tenant’s history.  They don’t ask questions and they pay the consequences, Bonham said.

 Indeed, Walsh said that when he recently bought a one-third interest in an apartment on Logan Avenue, he had to evict 25 people who were involved in the crack trade.  Thirteen, he said, were Section 8 recipients and probably would find another place to live within the month.   “It (angers me) when there’s so many thousands of decent people on the Section 8 waiting list, and here we have these people who’ll take the certificate and let their boyfriend move in and deal drugs,” Walsh said.

Evan Becker, the Housing Commission’s executive director, said that, to a certain extent, the agency’s hands are tied when it comes to dealing with bad Section 8 tenants. 

"We are restricted to a great degree by the federal regulations,” he said.  “To be blunt, you can murder, deal drugs, rape, break the law in any way you want and we don’t have grounds to terminate Section 8 assistance.”

The rules do allow the commission to boot people out of the Section 8 program, however, if they have either unreported income or too many people living in their apartment.   “It sounds strange,” Becker said.  “But when there’s drug dealing going on, for example, there’s usually unreported income.  And there are often more people living in the apartment than are allowed under the Section 8 agreement.”   The regulations also allow the commission to lean on landlords who look the other way while their complexes degenerate.  If the apartments are abused, the agency can refuse to certify tenants to live in them, Becker said.

Police are now meeting with the Housing Commission each week to trade information about the regulations and infractions.   “It’s a situation that’s gotten out of hand in other cities, ”Becker said, “and we aren’t going to let it happen here.”             

Reprinted From

The Tribune