Metro

Foster Tarver served 49 years as a murder accomplice. Should Pittsburgh’s housing authority deny him housing forever?

  • Courier Newsroom
Foster Tarver, 68, was released from prison in June 2018 after the possibility of parole was added to his mandatory life sentence. He’d hoped to find a place to live through the Housing Authority of the City of Pittsburgh but was denied because of his conviction. (Photo by Ryan Loew/PublicSource)
“Would you feel safe living next to a murderer?”
This was the question Jerry Brown of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development asked of me when I reached out to him about the Pittsburgh case of Foster Tarver.Tarver was convicted of first-degree murder in 1969. He was 17 years old, a juvenile, but tried as an adult. Tarver was armed when he walked into a Harrisburg bank, but he didn’t pull the trigger. The law treated him as if he’d killed the man who was shot by his partner. Tarver was put on death row before the sentence was lowered to life in prison.
Then in 2012, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Miller v. Alabama that automatic life prison sentences for juveniles are unconstitutional. In 2017, Judge Richard A. Lewis resentenced Tarver to 40 years to life in prison. Tarver was paroled in June 2018 after serving 49 years in prison.
After release, Tarver — now 68 years old — moved home to Pittsburgh and has been living with his brother.
Given Pittsburgh’s deficit of affordable housing, Tarver struggled to find a place of his own. He applied for housing with the Housing Authority of the City of Pittsburgh [HACP] in September 2018, but learned his search would be complicated not only by waitlists.
The housing authority denied his application based on his criminal background on Dec. 24. The agency cited Section 8.7 of their Admissions and Continued Occupancy Policy, which states that occupants convicted of murder “will be denied for life from the participation of HACP.”
READ ENTIRE ARTICLE AT:
https://www.publicsource.org/should-pittsburghs-housing-authority-deny-a-convicted-murderer-housing-forever/

About Post Author

Courier Newsroom

See author's posts

Comments

From the Web

Skip to content