Homelessness Law Blog

In 1957, on a lazy September day, Pete Seeger took up a twelve-string guitar and did something rather ordinary. At the Highlander Folk School in southern Tennessee, Seeger performed “We Shall Overcome” to an audience of civil rights activists. But while he’d performed the song so often it had become an impalpable appendage, there was a young preacher in attendance hearing it for the first time. The next day, as he drove across the border into Kentucky, Dr. Martin Luther King hummed the tune from a backseat, and remarked: “That song really sticks with you, doesn’t it?”

There’s little in the human experience which art cannot digest. Art clarifies what cognition alone cannot. And when it reflects not only our individual experiences, but collective hurts and aspirations, its power to unite disparate peoples is unparalleled. King’s and Seeger’s childhoods were wildly divergent, but both men were subsumed by the movement for civil rights, because they were alike in their belief in our most human truth: we are all equal, and we have a responsibility to one another.

Homelessness, like segregation, is a blight on this nation. Its existence is a testament to entrenched interests and apathy, and speaks to a systemic failure to honor our obligations to one another. Bruce Springsteen once said that he seeks in his music to “measure the distance between the American promise and the American reality.” (more…)

With the release of Opening Doors: The Federal Strategic Plan to Prevent and End Homelessness, it’s been a busy week at the Law Center. We’ve commented for print media and spent time taping radio interviews. You can find our take on the plan here.

But while lots of people are thinking about the plan, it’s equally important to look at the actions federal agencies are taking to address the issue of homelessness. Plans are promises to undertake future activities; actions are concrete steps being taken now – steps that will affect people’s lives. So it’s particularly interesting that as the plan was being released we were also busy submitting comments to HUD on the agency’s proposal for implementing the expanded definition of “homeless” contained in last year’s HEARTH Act.

How much to expand the definition was a tough legislative issue. Advocates, congressional staff, and Members of Congress themselves – all of whom shared a goal of ending homelessness – couldn’t agree on exactly how to do it. So Congress compromised, expanding the definition in important but limited ways. And we accepted that compromise in the interest of making progress, hoping that HUD would in turn offer a constructive proposal for implementing the new law.

The Federal Plan is a broad document – that’s one of the things we like best about it. Unfortunately, when the proposed definition changes came out in April, HUD had not actually interpreted the definition expansion broadly. Instead they worked to narrow the reach of the law – seeking to require written verifications when the law permits oral statements, and trying to limit language protecting people who live in all types of dangerous and unsafe conditions by only considering them homeless if the dangerous conditions relate to violence.

This is unfortunate – federal agencies are meant to implement the will of Congress, not find loopholes to make it harder for people in need to get assistance. HUD should review our comments, and the comments of many other advocates, and revise the proposed definition to more closely track the law. If they do not, it may be a sign that HUD’s actions won’t match the rhetoric of the Federal Plan.

-Jeremy Rosen, Policy Director

This morning, the United States Interagency Council on Homelessness announced the release of Opening Doors: Federal Strategic Plan to Prevent and End Homelessness. The plan, which will be the Obama Administration’s official policy position on homelessness, will give direction to the federal agencies and guidance to state and local governments. 

The plan does a great job of outlining the issues.  It’s comprehensive, covers all populations, and acknowledges different federal definitions of homelessness and their importance — as opposed to the Council’s past tendency to recognize only the HUD definition of homelessness.  The goals are also good; this is the first federal government document to explicitly call for preventing and ending family homelessness in ten years. (more…)

Click the image above to watch “Deaf”

They say “from the mouths of babes comes the truth,” and today I was blown away by the brilliance of youth.  The LA County Commission on Human Relations has brought together a group of youth with record producers and Grammy award winning artists to write songs with a positive message, and they have formed a group called “The Bricks.”  Moved by the stories of homeless persons being burned alive, two of the youth, Maria Tuadi and Tevin Douglas composed “Deaf,” a touching song that humanizes all-too-often dehumanized victims of such violence against homeless persons.  They performed this song today for an audience of human rights activists, and more than just my eyes teared up at the refrain calling our attention to “silent cries at night.”

This song comes at a critical time in California for taking steps to help protect homeless persons from violence.  Following the lead of Maryland and the District of Columbia, California’s Assembly just passed AB 2706 which would add homeless persons to the list of protected groups under hate crimes laws.  This is a sign of the growing awareness of violence against homeless persons, but unfortunately that awareness comes as these cases increase in number and severity. In just the past few weeks, a homeless man in Virginia barely survived being set on fire, a disabled homeless man in South Carolina was beaten to death, and a homeless man in Michigan was shot in the face with a paintball gun and lost an eye.

California’s senators need to hear from constituents that no person deserves to be treated as less than human, and to pass AB 2706.  And Californians and all Americans need to hear this song and be touched by the brilliance of youth.

-Eric Tars, Human Rights Program Director

This guest post comes to us from Board Member G.W. Rolle who works with Pinellas County Coalition for the Homeless in Florida.

Over a week ago now, the St. Petersburg City Council passed an ordinance outlawing all roadside solicitation.  The ordinance was passed with a unanimous vote, and has been met with praise from several council members and area residents alike.  Unfortunately, few seem to realize the far-reaching effects this law would have on the St. Petersburg population.  The language of the ordinance does not distinguish types of solicitation, and would therefore outlaw the selling of newspapers at traffic intersections or even the fire department’s annual fundraising for muscular dystrophy.

Although the ordinance stems from a concern for public safety, there are many people that stand to be harmed by this ordinance.  Dozens of homeless people and community members will lose important income that comes from the sale of street newspapers. The St. Petersburg Times and the Tampa Tribune have spoken out against the ordinance. Times Publishing, the St. Petersburg Times’ parent company, has filed a lawsuit saying the ordinance violates freedom of speech.

The ordinance amounts to yet another instance of the criminalization of homelessness – where street vendors (often homeless) are punished for carrying out behaviors necessitated by their economic situations – and the implications are far reaching.

If council members stopped thinking of homelessness as a crime, they could begin looking for solutions to the problem, such as affordable housing.  City councils should embrace ordinances that promote constructive engagement and dismiss those ordinances that merely dismiss the homeless. Housing is a human right. But when housing is not available, the solution is not to punish those who are without it.

Photo Credit: dlkinney

It’s no secret that the foreclosure crisis has had a tremendous impact on the United States. In 2008, state and local homeless groups reported a 61 percent rise in homelessness since the beginning of the foreclosure crisis. But what may surprise you is that 40 percent of families facing foreclosure-related eviction are not owners, but renters.  Worse, 7 million households living on extremely low incomes are presently at risk of foreclosure.

Thanks in part to a report issued by the Law Center and the National Low Income Housing Coalition at the beginning of 2009, the federal government and a number of states have taken action.  The Protecting Tenants at Foreclosure Act (PTFA) was signed into law by President Obama in May of last year, and it affords tenants unprecedented federal protections – including the right to 90-days notice prior to eviction or, in many cases, the right to stay in their home until the end of their lease.

But as the law will eventually expire and does not negate state law when it offers renters better protections, it’s important that steps be taken at the state level too.  We’re happy to report progress on that front!  Since the release of our 2009 report, 16 states have enacted new renters’ rights laws, and 21 states have proposed legislation pending.  This helps fill gaps in PTFA’s protections, and assures security for renters in the long-term, in the event that PTFA is not renewed past its 2012 sunset.

There’s still a lot to be done, though.  As you’ll discover in our new report, Staying Home: The Rights of Renters Living in Foreclosed Properties, renters’ rights are being violated across the country.  New property owners (often banks) are many times failing to inform or misleading renters about their rights, or even illegally evicting them.  Federal and state regulators must get more involved to curb these trends, exercising their oversight of banks and, when appropriate, litigating to ensure compliance with the law.

To read our new report, click here. Please circulate it widely.

-Andy Beres, Grant Writer/Communications Assistant

Photo credit: respres

Amid the hand wringing attending most conversations about the soaring national deficit, one word tends to surface with particular urgency: transformation.  At a moment of dwindling federal resources, many argue, nothing short of a dramatic overhaul of traditional government services is necessary in order to replenish public coffers.  As often as not, moreover, the private market has been identified as the necessary catalyst to trigger such alchemy.

The concept of galvanizing an established approach to social service delivery certainly underlies the Preservation, Enhancement, and Transformation of Rental Assistance (PETRA) Act, which the Department of Housing and Urban Development recently proposed as a means of channeling additional funding into the country’s cash-starved public housing system.  By inviting private investment—and, some would add, the potential for private ownership—into the domain of public rental housing, HUD has prompted a conversation about the relative merits of security and experimentation in social policy.

A similar debate has emerged with respect to public education, long a breeding ground for market-driven reform proposals. In addition to promoting the expansion of privately administered charter schools, the U.S. Department of Education continues to condition federal funding on such quantifiable measures as standardized test data, an approach that all but ignores the social and economic factors behind educational achievement.  As one analyst has noted, the U.S. has shifted “from a focus on providing equality in the ‘inputs’ of education—family environment, community conditions, and so on… to a focus on providing equality in the ‘outputs.’” (more…)

Over the past few months, the U.S. government has been holding consultations all across the country to prepare for their participation in the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) process at the UN Human Rights Council.  We at the Law Center have been coordinating housing groups all across the country in participating in these consultations, ensuring both grassroots and technical expert voices on housing issues have been heard.

Last week, at a training on the UPR process in DC, David Sullivan, Attorney-Adviser at the U.S. State Department, was asked what human rights issue he thought was most urgent based on the consultations held to date.  His answer:

“Housing. We have heard more about housing than you would believe in these sessions. If I had to pick the number one issue brought to the U.S. it would be housing.”

This is a huge credit to all the organizing we and the local organizers at each of these consultations has been doing.  In a review that covers every human rights issue, over a time period that includes things like Guantanamo, racial profiling, immigration, Prop 8, and a economic crisis not seen since the Depression, the number one human rights issue the government is hearing about is housing.

So we know we’ve got their attention.  Now let’s make some change.

-Eric Tars, Human Rights Program Director