Target Practice

This thesis analyzes how intersectional failures during the development of drug and public housing policy and law diminish their subjects’ legal and human rights. Racialized narratives developed throughout United States history define both public housing and drug usage. These histories not only morph how the Federal Government perceives public housing as a space and drugs as an object, but also how they change the nature in which government handles both public housing residents and drug users, as subjects of the law. As a result, the actions of Congress in both of these realms have undue negative impact on public housing residents, who are disproportionately people of color. Through War on Drugs acts, which place public housing in the criminal justice system, such as The AntiDrug Abuse Act of 1988, The CranstonGonzalez National Affordable Housing Act, and The HOPE Act of 1996, public housing residents’ Constitutional rights to due process and privacy have been severely limited. For these people, and for women of color specifically, this lessened rights status has not only limited their access to safe and affordable housing, but has also created a situational reality within which the law takes advantage of them due to their personal identity.