Certainly we will watch what the experience of these two buildings is and see what the result is. A Columbus, Ohio, developer in 1994 may have been the first to require drug tests of renters, and a handful of landlords in other cities soon followed, neatly fitting the policy into a lease that included other typically forbidden things, such as wild animals, waterbeds or subletters. Legal experts arguing that no law prohibits a private company from administering voluntary drug tests said the policy would probably hold up in court. This represents a more pre-emptive strike, and it may not be such a bad idea. Housing advocates say drug testing is a natural outgrowth of crime and politics.
Laws now make property owners liable for criminal activity on their land.
The nature of politics today is that it's a huge faux pas to be soft on drugs and crime. For Holsten, the threat of prosecution factored heavily into his company's decision to require drug testing of tenants. Here we are, a developer of low-income housing, trying to do good things for the community, and we are being taken to task for our tenants' criminal activity. Quite remarkable, consider the prevalence of drug use in this country. Each night, street toughs held court as drug dealers worked the streets.