WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court ruled yesterday that government agencies can use aggressive eviction policies to get rid of drug users in public housing.

Justices, without dissent, said they had no problem with a federal law and related policies that allow entire families to be evicted from public housing for drug use by one member.

The ruling is a relief for housing leaders, who argued that without such tools drug problems would worsen in public housing.

The losers were four elderly California tenants who challenged the zero-tolerance policy for drugs in federally subsidized housing after receiving eviction notices.

Justices dismissed the tenants' claims that they should be allowed to avoid eviction by showing they were unaware of wrongdoing.

Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist wrote that the government, as a landlord, can control activities of its tenants while trying to provide safe, drug-free housing.

The ''one-strike'' provision was part of a drug law that Congress passed in 1988 amid complaints about crime in public housing. The challenge here centered on policies developed to follow the law.

Critics of the law said the Supreme Court should have recognized that the evictions are too harsh.

"The only way they can get away with it is because it affects poor people," Sheila Crowley, head of the National Low Income Housing Coalition, said yesterday.