3
Street roots
Oct. 10, 2014
f l
Where pot is concerned, legal or not, poverty’s a player
BY JAKE THOMAS
Home Forward, the agency that manages
about 1,980 units 5f public housing and
A I Ahis fall, Oregon voters could make the about 9,390 Housing Choice vouchers for
state the third in the country to
the Portland region, has a similar
J L . legalize marijuana for recreational
no-smoking-anything policy, according to its
use. However, what that might mean for
spokeswoman Shelley Marehesi. She says
Oregonians depends on where they fall on
that there is a question on the Housing
the economic spectrum.
Choice application form that asks if an
-
If Oregon voters approve Measure 91,
applicant or anyone in their household uses
which would legalize and regulate pot,
controlled substances. If they mark “yes,”
people who live in federally subsidized
they’re turned away, which Home Forward
housing — the primary low-income housing
has had to do, says Marehesi. Applicants for
service in the United States — wjll risk
public housing are notified that they will be
being evicted if they use the drug while the
denied if they admit to using marijuana,
rest of the state can smoke to their heart’s
even if it’s medicinal. Home Forward
content.
doesn’t have numbers on how many people
And if you have a conviction for
have been denied being admitted to housing
programs or evicted because of marijuana,
possessing pot on your record, which
says Marehesi.
includes an outsize share of minorities,
If there’s an indication that someone is .
Oregon’s politicians aren’t eager to get it
breaking Home Forward’s no-smoking
cleared.
policy, they will be given a notice, says
Under federal law, marijuana remains an
illegal substance that has no value medicinal .Marehesi, and will be evicted if the problem
persists. But w hat if someone is eating pot
or otherwise. Although 23 states and the
brownies in public housing?
District of Columbia have passed laws
“We have no way to know if someone is
sanctioning its medical use and Colorado
eating brownies,” says Marches!.
and Washington have legalized it for
7 Central City Concern, a large social
recreational use, the feds overarching reach
services nonprofit that manages 1,600 units
includes federal housing programs. '
of housing for low-income people, is taking a
“Historically, medical marijuana patients
have experienced intense discrimination and similar tack.
“Because we receive federal funding, and
reports of evictions and difficulty in
marijuana laws have not changed on a
obtaining public housing/ says Kris
federal level, CentralCity Concern will not
Hermes, spokesman for Americans for Safe
be changing any of its practices relating to .
Access, a national medical marijuana
drug use on behalf of tenants who are in
advocacy organization.
recovery and on behalf of all staff,” says
In 2011, the U.S. Department of Housing
Kathy Pape, the nonprofit’s spokeswoman.
and Urban Development issued a memo to
There are no numbers on how often it
local housing authorities stating that they
happens, but residents of public housing are
were required to establish policies that
evicted for using marijuana, even if it’s IegaT'
prohibited people from being admitted into
federal housing programs based on tlie ir use C rider state law. In August, the C o rtez
STAFF W R IT E R
Tncludm g 'm edical g
Tnmanj^ana" The federal government’s two
large housing programs are Housing Choice
Vouchers, which subsidize private rentals
for low-income tenants, and public housing,
which are federally funded facilities run by
local agencies.
The memo, which gave some flexibility to
how local housing authorities on their
handling of pQt-smoking tenants, applied to
both programs.
Arnie Fiske Zuniga, deputy executive
director of the Seattle Housing Authority,
says her agency hasn’t changed its drug
policies in response to Washington state’s
legalization of pot. Specifically, she says, the
authority has a policy of not allowing
smoking of any kind in its properties.
“It’s federal funding, and federal law
trumps,” she says.
-Jo ttrn ak T ep o rto d th a t an#7~year-
old re s id e n t of D olores,
Colorado was forced
to vacate her
federally subsidized
apartment for
smoking pot, ,
which she told
the paper was
for her
arthritis.
Marehesi
told Street
Roots that Home
Forward recently
evicted someone
from a property f<
running amedica
grow operation i
public
Legalize, regulate pet,
BY JAKE THOMAS
-.STAFF VWTBR
<' "
Jarris spent much of his
; life with people addicted to
substances, and he knows
about drugs and what they can do to
people. So when Harris came out in
support of Measure 91, which would
legalize recreational marijuana use if
approved by voters in. November, heads
turned.
After spending years working for mental
health and addictions programs in Wyoming
and Illinois, he moved to Portland Where he
became one of the founding staff members
of Central City Concern, today’ Portland’s
largest nonprofit for low-income recovery
and housing.services. Harris went on to
become its executive director before
leaving to head the Oregon Department of
Human Services addiction and mental
health division.
■
offense oi>your record càrrieOÌnWticÌSÌ,
social and employment consequences.
Measure 91 ^doesn’t provide any
mechanism for Oregonians with a
marijuana-related misdemeanor or
felony on their record, which can be
a barrier to jobs and housing, to get
it expunged.
“I’m hopeful, frankly, that we
will have some relief for those
in prison, whether it’s
legislation or pardon from
the governor,” says Leland
Berger, a Portland attorney
who has long been active On
marijuana issues, “But if it
were up to me the,
initiative would have
cleared it all.” „
But so. far,
lawmakers and th e
governor haven’t warmed to the idea.
Janet Langley, a legislative aide for State
Rep. Peter Buckley, an Ashland Democrat
who been active on legalizing marijuana,
says that there are no discussions among
lawmakers about expunging people’s
previous pot convictions if Measure 91
passes. She also says that Buckley is not
optimistic about lawmakers taking action on
the issue.
Melissa Navas, spokeswoman for Oregon
Gov. John Kitzhaber, says that there are no
plans in place to begin issuing pardons for
people with pot convictions on their
records.
“I expect that there will be significant
pushback from law enforcement and
prosecutors to any sort of automatic
expungement,” says David Fidanque,
executive director of the ACLU of Oregon.
The Multnomah Cóunty District
Attorney’s Office declined to comment on
What actions it would take if marijuana was
legalized this fall.
According to Dan Donohoe, spokesman
for the King County (Wash.) Prosecuting
Attorney’s Office, had about 175 cases
before around the time the state legalized
marijuana. As a result, those cases were
dismissed, says Donohoe,
However, in Seattle, problems with the
poor and minorities being targeted for
smoking pot persisted. Seattle passed an
ordinance prohibiting pot smoking in public,
and began ticketing offenders. This summer,
a report emerged that most of these tickets
Were going to an outsized portion of people
who are homeless and/or black. One officer
w ro te 80 percent of th e tic k e ts. I n r e s p o n s e ,
, th e city a tto rn e y is se e k in g to d ism iss th e
citations, and the officer who wrote the 1
most tickets is under investigation.
Colorado and Washington’s legalisation
ballot measures, like Oregon’s, brought no
immediate relief to people with past
convictions. In Washington, a bill was
introduced in the legislature last year that
would forgive misdemeanor pot convictions.
It didn’t pass. In Colorado, an appellate '
court ruled this spring that people with
minor marijuana convictions could challenge
them in court as a result of the state’s
legalization of pot. ,
Fidanque says that there is some good
news for people with a past record. In
Oregon, individuals with misdemeanors and
lower-level felonies can apply to the court to
have their récords cleared.
ite addiction expert
Street Roots spoke with Harris about his
support for marijuana legalization, what
goes into a good prevention campaign and
why people in his line of work might be
reluctant to back the measure.
criminalized for
housing.
Hermes says that after HUD issued its
2011 memo, some housing authorities in
California began evictihg its pot-smoking
tenants, with Los Angeles being particularly
eager to give the boot to marijuana
smokers.
Hermes doesn’t expect any court
challenges to federal housing program’s ban
on medical pot to succeed given that statè
supreme courts have tended to err on the
side of restricting the rights of people who
use the drug. For instance* the Oregon
Supreme Court ruled in 2010 that
employers can fire someone for using pot
even if it’s medical.
“It’s still an allowable form of social
*
discrimination that can::be used in thè
context of public housing,” he says.
Measure 91, which would legalize
marijuana in Oregon, doesn’t affect landlord-
tenant relationships. Landlords, under the
measure, can still maintain drug-free
housing policies.,
A 2013 report from the American Civil
Liberties Union, drawing on 2010 statistics
from the FBI, found that 10,000 people in
Oregon were arrested for pot possession
that year. The same report found that in
Oregon biacks were twice as likely to be .
arrested for marijuana as whites.
There are 174 people in state prison for '
marijuana crimes, according to figures for
New Approach Oregon, the organization
spearheading passage of Measure 91, which
it obtained through a public records request
With the Oregon Department of Corrections.
According to NeW Approach Oregon, law
enforcement in the state has arrested or
cited 99,000 people for marijuana offense in
W ^ H ^ d é^ ^ ^ H a v in g even a minor
What do you say to
Richard H arris: Well, (marijuana) has
been misciassified for 80 years, and people
have some dependency issues with
marijuana. But on a scale of dangerousness
as a drug, it’s at the very bottom. Alcohol is
a much more dangerous drug. Marijuana is
not a dangerous drug like opiates; it’s a
benign drug that’s been misciassified. It’s
been driven into the black market, which
supports crime and people who are busted
for it get a criminal record. It’s pn
their record permanently, which
So if you had a regulated market
for marijuana, you could control
access to.it, so kids aren’t buying it
from someone under the bleachers.
A regulated market is going to be
better than criminalizing i t It hasn’t
worked for a long time, and it could
turn tax dollars back into schools
and prevention education.
J.T.:
.
the health care approach to drug use?
R.H.: If you took a public health
approach to educating people on what the
consequences are on using i t they will
make up their minds on what they are *
going to do. We regulate alcohol and there
are people with problems with alcohol and
there are traffic fatalities, but it’sbetter
than an illegal market
It’s sort of catch-as-catchcan, particularly
with young people, and there is money in
See LEGALIZE POT, p a g e 7