Privacy Becoming A Disposable Right For People With Low/No/Fixed Incomes

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I was speaking w one of my old clients I'd worked with years ago to help obtain SSDI and housing.  He's an old-school tramp with a long history of rail-riding, substance use, homelessness, serious criminal involvement and more recently some pretty significant physical disabilities.

Much has changed for him since we first met, and he's healthier, happier and stabler than he has been in decades, thanks in large part to the work we did together several years ago.

About a year ago, he moved into a public housing unit under a section 8 voucher that provides housing to folks with disabilities and/or who are considered senior citizens.  He's got a very nice one bedroom apartment and he couldn't have been happier at his home until a recent apartment complex meeting called by the management.

During that meeting, the management stated that they were concerned the local police would designate the complex with the dreaded "nuisance" status, which would then kick in a number of draconian steps designed to put an end to the nuisance.

Tennessee law states that:

the District Attorney General has authority to bring a civil action against any establishment deemed a nuisance. The statute defines a nuisance, in part, as “any place in or upon which… unlawful sale of any regulated legend drug, narcotic or other controlled substance…quarrelling, drunkenness, fighting, or breaches of the peace are carried on or permitted.”

I'm not exactly sure how local authorities determine what makes one place versus another a public nuisance, but logic tells me it's in the number of police and ambulance responses to the complex in question.

Now, this public nuisance law isn't by itself a terrible thing, and it has been used effectively to shut down permanently some of the more egregious examples of a public nuisance, like crack houses and apartment complexes so overflowing with weapons and thugs only a gang member or a complete moron would try to visit someone there.

What can become a terrible thing is how an apartment manager may begin to deal with the problems causing the public nuisance in the first place.

Some of the ideas put forth, my buddy tells me, included armed security, locked gates, ID checks upon entry, facial recognition lockouts on the elevators and cameras monitoring every public area (all things that are now standard in many low income housing units). However, his complex is also considering "room checks" after 10PM by off-duty Metro police who are hired at the complex to provide the security.

HUH?

This plan, modeled after one that is currently in place in at least one of the seedier hotels in the downtown Nashville area, has police wandering the premises, knocking on doors after 10pm and entering units to "look around" to make sure they're not up to anything scandalous or trying to hide more folks in the room than what were registered (spelled PAID FOR).

Okay, so I get the need to keep the peace, and I understand the need to control access to some of these places so that residents can live in peace.  But when cops start knocking on my door at bedtime and come in snooping around my apartment without a warrant, I gotta draw the line with that.

And please, spare me the argument that if a potential resident "doesn't like the regulation, they can find another place," because most of these folks wait months and sometimes years on the streets, with friends and/or family, and in shelters  for housing, and when openings occur in these public housing units, they're few and far between.  If an individual turns down a unit with these Constitution-offensive stipulations, chances are they won't see another "choice" for years.  Most of the folks in these situations take whatever they can get out of desperation and fear.

Folks with their backs against the wall (or on the cold, hard ground under the local freeway viaduct) will agree to a lot of things they don't like in order to improve their current situation, but dangling housing in front of them while simultaneously stripping them of their right to privacy and unreasonable search and seizure is an offensive and disgusting way of manipulating them and taking advantage of their desperation.

I'm not sure this is going to fly at this particular complex, but I can tell you that if it does, we'll be looking for a lawyer to address the Constitutionality of it.  This is beyond reprehensible and if it occurs, watch for it to arrive in a city near you, soon.  Frankly, I suspect it's already happening elsewhere, it just hasn't been brought into the light of day (no pun intended).

We aim to change that.