How to Start a Public Housing Drug Prevention Program

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Start a Public Housing Drug Prevention Program

Drug abuse problems within public housing residential buildings are not an uncommon ordeal. Whether the problem is big or small, it is the responsibility of the community as well as the Housing Authority and residents within the public housing units to address the problem. A good starting point is to create a drug prevention program.

Difficulty: Challenging

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

Resident Participation
Drug Policy
Housing Staff involvement
Local Police and Community involvement

Step 1

Consider creating a drug prevention task force consisting of resident council members, volunteers of the community and a non profit organization that has a mission statement that is related to fighting drug issues.
Step 2

Determine how big or small the problem is by coming up with a survey to be completed by residents. At the same time get with the Housing Authority Security or Police staff to find out the crime statistics within the public housing residential building. You’re looking to find out how many drug raids were conducted within the past year or two. Also you want to know how many violent crimes or deaths were related to drug abuse.
Step 3

Have a committee or drug task force mission of reducing the number of drug raids and violent incidents in the building. Determine if the Housing Authority has a Drug Prevention policy and whether or not the policy is being enforced.
Step 4

Determine whether or not your resident council or housing authority is eligible to apply for grant funding that may be available through your local non profit foundations or government grant agencies. These funds would be used to start a neighborhood watch program, create and distribute flyers and conduct Health and Safety meetings to get resident input about the problem. Make sure that the survey is devised to rate how residents feel about the drug problem. If residents don’t believe there is a problem, then the problem can’t be addressed. Questions should be similar to the following: To what extent do you feel there is an illegal drug problem in our building? (circle only one answer)

a. There is a major problem with illegal drugs
b. Most of the time there is a problem with illegal drugs
c. Sometimes there is a problem with illegal drugs
d. There is a small problem with illegal drugs
e. There is no problem at all with illegal drugs
f. Not Sure or Undecided
Step 5

Get the residents to participate in the survey by letting them know that they’ll have an opportunity to automatically be apart of a drawing and win a prize such as a $200.00 gift basket or gift certificate.
Step 6

Have a resident retreat and include key housing authority staff to go over how the drug prevention policy can be reinforced and/or if needed revised. Write Press Releases and have community policing events on site at the building. This notifies the community at large that illegal drugs will not be tolerated by the residents.
Step 7

Get with your local Police to formulate alliances with the neighborhood watch within the resident building and ensure that the residents have floor captains and Housing Authority security working together to monitor the buildings investigate suspicious activities and review cameras on a daily basis. Make sure that the Housing Authority includes the residents on the applicant selection process to weed out individuals who may be known drug dealers or users from being accepted to reside in the building.

Comments

amysmarts said

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on 10/23/2009 Great article How to Start a Public Housing Drug Prevention Program. This is all great advice and good tips. I know it will help a lot of people. Thanks. 5*