The City Wants to Evict This Family Because a House Guest Committed a Crime They Didn't Know About Somewhere Else

[Muda69]

https://reason.com/2019/08/02/the-city-wants-to-force-this-familys-eviction-from-their-home-because-their-guest-committed-a-crime-they-didnt-know-about-somewhere-else/

Quote

Last fall and winter, Jessica Barron and Kenny Wylie let one of their teenaged son's friends, who described himself as homeless, stay at their house in Granite City, Illinois. At first the teenager, Jason Lynch, slept at the house intermittently; later, as the weather got colder, he often was there several nights a week. Barron and Wylie's reward for that act of kindness, if the city has its way, will be government-ordered eviction from their home.

After Lynch broke into a local restaurant last May, the city invoked its "crime-free housing" ordinance, which demands eviction when "any member of lessee's household" commits a crime. In this case, the crime did not happen at the rental property, and Barron and Wylie did not participate in it, know about it ahead of time, or help Lynch evade the police afterward. In fact, Barron turned Lynch in after she found him hiding in her basement. But none of that matters under Granite City's ordinance, which holds tenants strictly liable for the crimes of household members, including temporary residents like Lynch.

"This effort to make an innocent family homeless violates the federal Constitution at a bedrock level," the Institute for Justice argues in a federal lawsuit it filed yesterday on behalf of Barron, Wylie, and their landlord, Bill Campbell, who does not want to evict them. The complaint says the crime-free housing ordinance violates their due process rights, the 14th Amendment's guarantee of equal protection, the Fifth Amendment's ban on taking property for "public use" without "just compensation," and freedom of association, which is protected by the First Amendment.

Barron and Wylie, who have three teenaged children, have been living in the house at 1632 Maple Street in Granite City for two years. They had planned to buy it eventually under a rent-to-own contract with Campbell. But the city is demanding that he abrogate that contract and threatening to revoke his rental license if he fails to do so. One police officer even threatened to arrest Campbell, although it's not clear what the charge would be.

....
No one should be punished for a crime someone else committed," says I.J. senior attorney Robert McNamara. "That simple notion is at the heart of our criminal justice system—that we are all innocent until proven guilty. And yet Granite City is punishing an innocent family for a crime committed by someone they barely knew."

This law appears to have been enacted primarily to combat drug trafficking and so-called 'drug houses'. Yet when it comes to government and law enforcement overreach the law of unintended consequences rears its head once again.