Kruger: Housing Authority Should Do Background Checks on Tenants

The city’s housing authority should conduct systematic criminal background checks on its tenants, state Senator Carl Kruger told the New York Sun yesterday. The “criteria for continuing tenancy should be no different than the initial application.”People with criminal backgrounds residing in public housing became an issue after the death on Friday of a police officer while he was chasing three alleged shoplifters in Manhattan, two of whom were living in public housing despite their criminal records.“With more than 420,000 residents we couldn’t physically do annual background checks,” a spokesman for the housing authority, Howard Marder said via e-mail.As part of the application for public housing, the New York City Housing Authority conducts criminal background screenings for all household members 16 and older. Applicants with a felony or misdemeanor conviction are ineligible for entry until they have served their sentence and remained free of convictions of pending charges for periods specified for the degree of the crime, according to the agency applications manual. But once entry is granted, the authority does not routinely conduct criminal checks.Mr. Kruger, representing Brooklyn, said, “Onerous as the burden may be, that’s the role of government.” Besides, “not all 420,000 leases come up at the same time.”Using the national crime database, the housing authority could easily perform criminal history checks, Mr. Kruger said. “As leases become due, that should just be part of the process.”Generally, however, the tenants do not have a lease and live on a month-to-month basis, a former high-level housing authority official said.Two of the suspects arrested on Friday – Lorenzo Walters, 18, and Julio Marquez, 19 – live in different buildings in a Brooklyn public housing development, and all of the suspects, including Rico Banks, 19, have criminal records, law enforcement officials said.Mr. Walters pleaded guilty to criminal sale of marijuana in September and was given an adjournment in contemplation of dismissal. Mr. Marquez pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct in 2003, to criminal possession of a controlled substance in July 2004, and to driving without a license in May 2005. Also in May, Mr. Marquez was arrested for a series of misdemeanors – third-degree assault, criminal possession of a controlled substance, and consumption of alcohol in public. After he failed to appear for his next court date, a bench warrant was issued for his arrest in November 2005.At about 6 p.m. on Friday, Officer Kevin Lee “suddenly fell to the ground” while pursuing the three suspects, the police commissioner, Raymond Kelly, said. Lee was later pronounced dead at the hospital. Responding to questions from reporters yesterday after the police department’s first promotions ceremony of the year, Mr. Kelly called Lee’s death a “terrible tragedy.” The cause of death is pending further testing, according to a spokeswoman for the medical examiner’s office.The suspects were arraigned yesterday on charges of robbery, grand larceny, criminal possession of stolen property, coercion, and resisting arrest, the Manhattan district attorney’s office said. Their next court date is Thursday.According to the housing authority, “last year there were approximately 799 exclusions of individuals from public housing for a variety of non-desirable/criminal acts and approximately 150-200 criminal activity evictions.” The housing authority said eviction proceedings are considered on a case-by-case basis. The grounds for termination of tenancy include issues of “non-desirability,” according to the manual. “Non-desirability” is “conduct or behavior of the tenant or any person occupying the premises of the tenant which constitutes 1) a danger to the health and safety of the tenant’s neighbors; 2) conduct on or in the vicinity of the Authority premises which in the nature of a sex or morals offense; 3) a source of danger or a cause of damage to the employees, premises or property of the Authority; 4) a source of danger to the peaceful occupation of other ten ants; or 5) a common law nuisance.”Mr. Marquez has been living in his apartment since he was eight, at the request of his grandmother, the tenant of record, and Mr. Walters has resided in his apartment since birth, Mr. Marder said. Although criminal background checks apply to household members 16 or over, there are no routine checks for residents, and both males have evaded any internal investigation.“There is no negative information on either of them in the tenant record folders,” Mr. Marder, from the housing authority, said through e-mail. “We have not received any police incident reports for either of these individuals. If and when we do, we will make inquiries.”A few “bad people” can “make life miserable,” for law-abiding residents in a housing development, the Republican Minority Leader of the City Council, James Oddo, said. He called on the housing authority to improve its screening and eviction processes. He said tenant associations need to identify problem apartments and problem tenants, “housing development by housing development,” and the housing authority “has to continue to streamline, and work towards improving the screening and eviction process.”When the criminal is a family member of the tenant, the agency sometimes prohibits the offender from entering the premises as a condition of the tenant’s lease.“One family member’s conviction hurts the entire family,” said an attorney at the City Bar Justice Center who has represented public housing applicants, Lisa Pearlstein.Dennis Saffran, an attorney who represented public housing tenants who pushed for the eviction of drug dealers about 10 years ago, said that if a person was capable of breaking the laws, it was not likely he would adhere to housing authority rules. That is why “you have to evict the family,” Mr. Saffran said. Such a stance may sound cruel he said, but not when you consider the plight of the offender’s law-abiding neighbors or the long list of people vying for each housing authority apartment.

Kruger: Housing Authority Should Do Background Checks on Tenants

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