As in Ohio, where a lawyer told the building's owners that the tests were legal as long as everyone was tested, Howell said Holston officials quickly concluded that the fastest way to run into legal problems would be to single out people for the tests. For its part, the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development, which enforces the Fair Housing Act, said such a policy is legal as long as it is enforced in an evenhanded manner. Still, even though everybody was tested, Matthew Roddy, Holston's executive vice president, expected a lawsuit. So far, that has not happened, in Chicago or Cleveland. Avery Friedman, a fair-housing attorney in Cleveland, thinks the rule is legally suspect.
Chemical dependency is a handicap.
And F. Willis Caruso Sr., a law professor at John Marshall Law School in Chicago who also runs the school's fair-housing clinic, sees another problem. There is also another concern that Howell said she has heard raised, that the test targets poor people and minorities. Howell said that is nonsense. This is a policy aimed at people engaged in criminal activity. Holston has used the tests to deny would-be tenants apartments and has refused to renew the leases of a handful of tenants who failed the tests after they moved in.