Welcome to the 2012 election. In states across the country, Republican controlled legislatures are passing bills that would restrict the ability of homeless and low income Americans to vote. Rejecting an amendment to allow homeless persons to vote with an affidavit of identity from a service provider, Wisconsin will now require voters to provide ID in order to vote. And Florida’s new law will require anyone who has moved to update their address before going to the polls; if they seek to do so on election day they will be forced to vote by provisional ballot – a ballot unlikely to be counted.
Proponents of these laws assert that they will prevent voter fraud. However, they can hardly point to any actual examples. So why is this being done? Isn’t it obvious? No demographic group votes in a monolithic bloc. But we can make some generalizations – poor people tend to support candidates who promise to preserve the social safety net, who care about low wage workers, and who work to make sure that all Americans have safe, decent, affordable housing. The legislators passing these bills are not those candidates. We cannot allow these laws to stand or new laws to be passed. As we move closer to next year’s election, the Law Center will review and analyze these restrictions. We will challenge them when we can, and make policy arguments in opposition where that provides our best chance for success. And when new laws are enacted, we will make sure that homeless persons and service providers understand their rights.
Voting rights are fundamental civil and human rights – rights that people in this country died for not too many years ago. They should be continuously expanded, not eroded.
In a recent series of cover stories, the Washington Post reported that over $400 million in federal HUD HOME funds meant to help local communities build affordable housing for low-income people has gone missing. This is a terrible thing. It’s reprehensible that sketchy developers, property flippers, and other unsavory people are siphoning off money meant for poor people, just to line their own pockets.
And given that there is already far too little funding available to build new housing, we can’t afford to waste even a dollar of what we do receive. Especially because stories like this only serve as fodder for politicians and other interest groups who argue that building affordable housing is an inefficient or ineffective use of tax dollars. How do we ask Congress to give us more money for programs we know generally work well, when the front page of the Post shows them working poorly?
As advocates for affordable housing, and indeed taxpayers ourselves, we should be outraged by this story. At the same time, we must undertake a sober evaluation of the facts. The questionable expenditures occurred over a period of five years, and accounted for less than .2 percent of HUD’s budget each year. HUD can and should exercise better control over the use of its funds, but make no mistake – this is no indictment of HUD as an agency or of the principle that all people have a human right to safe, decent, affordable housing. That’s a principle no amount of money can impugn.
For tenants living in foreclosed property, this isn’t a joke. Renters make up 40% of the households at risk of eviction due to foreclosure, and many of these families don’t know who will confront them the next time they hear a knock at the door. After signing a lease with one landlord, they are now living in a home that is owned by a different person (or a bank) with whom they’ve never had a relationship. Often, renters don’t know where to send their rent checks, who to call to fix a leaky pipe, or whether they should be hunting for a new place to live. Sometimes, tenants don’t even know for sure that a foreclosure has taken place until weeks or months after the fact.
After speaking with renters and local advocates, it became clear that the first point of contact after a foreclosure often is not the new owner—it’s a real estate agent. The real estate agents hired by banks to market rental properties for resale are often the only face-to-face representatives of their new landlords that renters will ever meet. And although they aren’t lawyers, renters often turn to these agents to get information about their rights to remain in their homes. This dynamic can leave both sides confused and frustrated.
The Law Center is therefore very happy to announce a new partnership with the National Association of Realtors. NAR is the largest trade organization in North America, with over 1.2 million members involved in all aspects of the real estate industry. Already, we have worked with them to develop a fact sheet on the Protecting Tenants at Foreclosure Act and a Frequently Asked Questions document for Realtors working with renters living in foreclosed properties. We’re also working with them to develop other means of reaching out to Realtors.
As the foreclosure crisis stretches on, and continues to affect renters all over the United States, the Law Center looks forward to working with NAR and other industry groups to make sure that tenants are educated about their rights and no longer worried every time they hear a knock at the door.
On Tuesday night, FOX TV hit Glee presented its nearly 9 million viewers with a second lesson on homelessness – offering a realistic picture of what family homelessness often looks like in the current housing crisis.
Sam, a new transfer student spending his first year with the Glee Club, is forced to reveal that his family has been living in a hotel room in order to quash rumors of indiscretions. He does so with shame, fearing that his fellow students will treat him differently when they find out. In the episode, he reveals a small room where he, his two siblings, and two parents have been living. They’ve sold most of their possessions – even his prized guitar – just to have the money they need to survive.
As the story goes, Sam moved to the area when his father found a great job opportunity. When that fell through, the family lost the house and as he notes, “When the bank takes your home… they just take it.”
Unfortunately, this is not an uncommon story for the American family these days. Family homelessness is on the rise across the country as a result of the foreclosure and economic crises and this story, though fictional, illustrates well both how it can happen, and how families cope.
There are hundreds of thousands of families joining the ranks of the “invisible” homeless population. A recent study by First Focus showed a 41% increase in the number of homeless students across the country in just the last two years, and a March 60 Minutes piece noted that, “so many kids have lost their homes that school buses now stop at dozens of cheap motels where families crowd into rooms, living week to week.”
I applaud Glee for again dealing with the hard issues facing American students today. The first step in advocacy is awareness, and Glee is doing its part to help viewers understand how homelessness impacts a family. At the National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty, we’re working to build on this awareness to ensure that all students like Sam get to keep attending school and receive the help they need to obtain affordable housing for their families. Together, we can prevent and end homelessness in our country.
-Whitney Gent, Development & Communications Director
There’s an obvious disconnect between Washington rhetoric and the American story. As Congress debates tax breaks for its wealthiest constituents and major cuts to the social safety net, more than 44 million homeless and poor people are waiting to learn their fate. That’s 14 out of every 100 Americans. Will they have a roof over the heads? Food to feed their children?
With the gap between rich and poor growing exponentially, it’s only common sense for our policies to reflect the increasing need. But there’s something lost in all of this, an inconvenient truth policymakers have been ignoring for decades: housing is a human right.
The United States is obligated by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and other international agreements, to ensure its every citizen has access to adequate housing and a basic standard of healthy living. And across the country, Americans agree. Recent polling shows that 75 percent believe housing is a human right.
At the National Forum on the Human Right to Housing, the Law Center will bring together homeless and poor people, federal policymakers, grassroots advocates, service providers, lawyers, journalists, and academics from across the country to share information and work collaboratively to reframe the public debate about homelessness, poverty, and access to justice.
This year’s speakers are leading experts on these issues. Here’s a small sample:
Carol Anderson, Assoc. Professor of African American Studies, Emory University, and author of Eyes Off the Prize
Peter Edelman, Professor of Law and Director of the Center on Poverty, Inequality, and Public Policy, Georgetown University School of Law
Barbara Ehrenreich, best-selling author of Nickel & Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America
Pam Fessler, poverty & philanthropy correspondent, National Public Radio
Bryan Greene, General Deputy Assistant Secretary for Fair Housing at HUD
Jonathan Harwitz, Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy & Programs at HUD
Gail Laster, Deputy Chief Counsel for the House Financial Services Committee
Barbara Poppe, Executive Director, U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness
The Forum comes on the heels of the United Nations Human Rights Council’s recent review of U.S. human rights policy. In its official response to the Council’s recommendations, the federal government acknowledged for the first time in history that homelessness implicates its human rights obligations.
Now is the time to mobilize communities across the country to fight for the dignity and basic quality of life of every American. The Forum will include workshops on applying the human rights framework to advocacy on issues like: preventing homelessness, criminalization, children’s education, state and local budgets, domestic violence, and veteran homelessness.
Forum participants will even receive training on how to communicate with legislators on these issues, and have the opportunity to meet with their elected representatives.
We hope you’ll join us on June 7-8 at the Thurgood Marshall Center in Washington, D.C. The Forum is a chance for the U.S. human rights movement to chart a course for the future – one, we hope, in which the American Dream more closely reflects our daily reality.
For more information, click here.Early registration is discounted, but ends May 15, so act fast!
-Andy Beres, Grant Writer & Communications Assistant
Welcome to the 2012 election. In states across the country, Republican controlled legislatures are passing bills that would restrict the ability of homeless and low income Americans to vote. Rejecting an amendment to allow homeless persons to vote with an affidavit of identity from a service provider, Wisconsin will now require voters to provide ID in order to vote. And Florida’s new law will require anyone who has moved to update their address before going to the polls; if they seek to do so on election day they will be forced to vote by provisional ballot – a ballot unlikely to be counted.
