Homelessness Law Blog

“I’ll be around. Somehow. I used to fall asleep thinking I wouldn’t wake up. Now I know better. Now I know, honey – it goes on and on and on.”

Last February, I wrote about a woman named “V.” She’s a homeless person who sat outside our K Street office for the better part of a year. I visited with her daily, and bought her lunch from time to time. She talked about the pain she was in, her addiction to alcohol, and the vicious love of her dead father. In between, she’d point out young women on the street and insist they were looking at me.

My visits weren’t noble. I can shamefully recall a few days when I took a different path to work because I didn’t have money for her. In shielding myself from her disappointment, I denied her the human contact she so dearly coveted.

I wrote before about a man she met at church. He was kind and gentle, giving her a place to stay while she got back on her feet. Her voice swelled with pride as she described looking for a job and scented shampoo. She was sober; there was such clarity to her thoughts.

But as the weeks passed, that clarity faded. The spark of life vanished from her eyes. There were bruises on her. She wouldn’t say where they came from, but I already knew. I pressed her for information about the man she was staying with.

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Too often in our society, homeless persons are devalued, ignored, and treated with much less respect than they deserve. They become accustomed to people walking by with only a disgusted glance in their direction. This lack of acknowledgment is dehumanizing.

Earlier this week, advocates in Rhode Island gathered to acknowledge and memorialize the lives of over 35 individuals who died homeless in the state in 2011. We commend Beneficent Church in Providence for the service they held and the time they dedicated to honor those our society failed. At the memorial, names were read aloud and thirty-five candles were lit for each person, as well as an extra for those who may have been neglected. It can be very difficult to track homeless deaths and oftentimes they are left without any memorial to mark the lives they led. The service in Rhode Island is an important reminder that, like all human beings, each and every homeless person is valuable and unique.

This memorial comes while cities across the country are enacting criminalization laws that sweep homeless persons out of public view, making it difficult for them to consistently access services from community groups.

These laws, which range from prohibiting loitering, begging, or camping/sleeping in public, have proven to be very costly. Numerous studies show that supportive housing and emergency shelter cost a lot less money than putting homeless persons in jail. But beyond the practical financial considerations, it is important that we provide homeless persons the respect they deserve as individuals and do what we can to improve their situations.

The service in Rhode Island is important, but we must work to prevent unnecessary deaths from ever happening in the first place. More must be done to acknowledge homeless persons in our society and provide them with the services they require.

- Megan Huber, Development & Communications Intern

Dear Friends—

Thank you for your support and involvement over the past year—and best wishes for 2012.  At the Law Center, we’re diving into important 2012 priorities and, after a year of transition, we’re welcoming new members to our team.  Their fresh perspectives will be critical as we expand our pro bono collaborations to provide our legal expertise and support to more communities.

The year promises to be a critical one on several fronts.  We’ll be marking the 25^th anniversary of the McKinney-Vento Act, drawing attention to its positive impact and pushing Congress to make good on its promise to end homelessness in America.  We’re also gearing up for the fall presidential election—challenging laws that keep homeless and poor people from voting, and working to ensure homelessness and poverty are treated seriously by the candidates.
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Over the past decade and a half, the Law Center has been working hard to get the federal government to acknowledge housing as a basic human right and begin taking steps to implement its obligations.  As documented in our report, Simply Unacceptable: Homelessness and the Human Right to Housing in the U.S., for many years, the government was openly opposed to defining housing as a human right.  It came close in recent years, but didn’t quite get there.

Then, during last year’s Universal Periodic Review (UPR), HUD stated for the first time the relevance of this human rights process to its domestic housing and homelessness policies.  Last week, the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness issued its first-year assessment and update of Opening Doors: The Federal Strategic Plan to Prevent and End Homelessness.  Among other items, the report states:

HUD has been working on a number of other activities over the past year that helps further the housing objectives in Opening Doors[.] In March 2011, the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) conducted the first comprehensive review on human rights done in the United States.  For the first time, the United States acknowledged housing as a human rights issue on an international stage. The Department of State, with the support of representatives from HUD, noted its support of the recommendation by UNHRC, which stated “broad range of safeguards for the homeless people to allow them the full enjoyment of their rights and dignity” and supports reducing and ending homelessness as a human rights concern.

This reaffirmation of the importance of the UPR in HUD’s and the Interagency Council’s work on homelessness is another step toward making the human right to housing the framework to which our government holds itself accountable.  While these words on paper don’t put homeless families in homes today, they are an essential step toward making sure those homes are created tomorrow, and that homelessness is prevented for more families in the future.

From my personal perspective as the Law Center’s human rights program director, this reference is a gratifying acknowledgment of the work we – and many others across the country – have been doing.  For years, pushing the human right to housing felt like banging our heads against the wall, with seemingly little progress.  But without those years, we would not have reached this tipping point, where it appears these references are beginning to build on each other.

Small words, but they represent a fundamental shift in policy. And as momentum continues to build, these words and values will help create that future where no one in America spends a single night without a place to call home.

- Eric Tars, Human Rights Program Director

This past summer I served as a human rights fellow at the National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty. The policy work I engaged in there will help spur change for countless Americans, but my interactions with a man named Jim reminded me of the very individual reasons this work is so important.

Jim sits on a bench at 15^th and K streets in Washington, D.C., across from a Cosi and one block from the Law Center. During the morning rush hour, his well-worn voice pleads with pedestrians, “Spare a dollar?” “I need to eat!” “Can you help me today?”

We usually say good morning and not much more as I pass by. But last Friday was a beautiful morning, sunny and warm without being oppressively hot. When I said hello, Jim declared that he was having a great day. He had found housing!

Jim is a D.C. native, born and bred. Education was a challenge for him here. His first grade teacher would turn on the television instead of teaching, and Jim was promoted each year without ever learning to read or write.

Jim enjoyed working in construction, but fell on hard times. After a back injury he was unable to work. When his mother passed away, the sale of her house left him a little money so he could rent his own room, but that apartment turned out to be the worst place for Jim. First, sheetrock from the ceiling fell down on him as he slept, re-injuring his back. Next, the old wires sparked and started a fire, destroying most of his belongings, and the rest of his money. In November, 2010, as D.C. prepared for winter, Jim moved out to the streets.

Jim has gotten funding from the Red Cross to stay in a hotel a few times, but generally he sleeps outside. He has diabetes and checks his blood sugar twice a day, subsisting on the kindness of strangers. Even though many people ignore him, he still jumps up mid-story to open the Cosi door for a woman pushing a stroller and toting a suitcase. He uses a cell phone to keep in touch with his sisters, his caseworker, and a lawyer helping him with the injuries from the sheetrock. Despite his illiteracy, Jim easily recites phone numbers and addresses off the top of his head.

Last week, his caseworker called to say that Jim would soon have a place to live, news he joyously shared with me. We both had the happiest of days.

My last day at the Law Center was bittersweet. This summer, I learned to fight homelessness on a larger scale, drafting resolutions for housing as a human right and editing a petition to the U.N. But as he shared his story with me, Jim brought into focus the reason for this all – no one should ever be without a place to call home.

-Julie Butner, former Human Rights Fellow

Each year, the Law Center recognizes outstanding contributions by individuals and organizations to the movement to end homelessness at its 13^th Annual McKinney-Vento Awards. This year’s event will be held tomorrow, Wednesday, Sept. 21 at the L’Enfant Plaza Hotel in Washington, D.C.

For Rob Robinson, homelessness isn’t an abstraction; he’s lived it.  For almost three years, Robinson survived on the streets and in shelters in Miami and New York.  And since resolving his homelessness in 2007, he’s become a powerful voice for all those still suffering its indignities.  Working with Take Back the Land, Picture the Homeless, and the National Economic and Social Rights Initiative, Robinson has been a fierce advocate for the human right to housing. He has also been a leader in the Campaign to Restore National Housing Rights.  G.W. Rolle, a former honoree and Law Center board member,  will present Robinson with this year’s Personal Achievement Award.

Robinson’s work has been made possible, in part, by the U.S. Human Rights Fund (USHRF), this year’s Stewart B. McKinney Award winner.  Since its founding in 2005, USHRF has provided more than $20 million to nonprofits fighting for human rights here at home.  Making the Law Center one of its core grantees right from the start, USHRF has helped us change the way policymakers view homelessness.  In March 2011, following years of advocacy by the Law Center, Robinson, and others, the U.S. acknowledged for the first time that homelessness implicates its human rights obligations. Human Rights expert Dorothy Q. Thomas, who helped start the fund, will present the award.

Congressman Barney Frank, this year’s Bruce F. Vento Award winner, has fought time and again for legislation addressing and preventing homelessness.  In 1987, he helped pass the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act.  And in recent years, his leadership has been critical to helping enact the Homelessness Emergency Assistance and Rapid Transition to Housing (HEARTH) Act, Homelessness Prevention and Rapid Re-housing Program (HPRP), and Protecting Tenants at Foreclosure Act (PTFA).  He was also a primary sponsor of the Neighborhood Stabilization Program and the Dodd-Frank Act. Susan Vento, the Congressman’s widow, will present Rep. Frank with this award.

This year’s Pro Bono Counsel Award will go to DLA Piper, which has provided thousands of hours of pro bono support to the Law Center across a range of issues, most prominently access to education for homeless children.  DLA Piper is taking a national leadership role on the Law Center’s new Project LEARN (Lawyers’ Education Access Resource Network) initiative.  The firm will provide training and technical assistance on homeless children’s education rights to families and school officials across the country. Suzanne Turner, pro bono partner at Dechert LLP, who received this honor last year, will present the award.

U.S. Labor Secretary Hilda Solis, originally scheduled to provide the evening’s keynote address, is unexpectedly unable to join us. In her stead, Assistant Secretary for Policy William Spriggs will join us to honor the efforts of those working to end homelessness in America.  Laura Evans, of Washington’s Fox 5 News, will also join us as the event’s mistress of ceremonies.

Thank you to all who have helped make this event possible. We’re so excited for what is certain to be an inspirational evening.

Earlier this week, the US Conference of Catholic Bishops (the Conference) sent a letter to the House of Representatives expressing their opposition to H.R. 2441, a bill which would eliminate the National Housing Trust Fund, which funds affordable housing programs.

The Conference’s opposition to this bill comes as no surprise, given their longstanding support for the Trust Fund, which originally passed in 2008. What may surprise some, however, is that the Conference frames this strong support for affordable housing in their affirmation that “Catholic tradition teaches that affordable and decent housing is a human right.”

Indeed, since at least 1975, the USCCB has explicitly addressed housing as a human right.  In “The Right to a Decent Home: A Pastoral Response to the Crisis in Housing,” the USCCB sets out their position, which is sadly equally relevant today as it was over 30 years ago. There, they state, “Since decent housing is a human right, its provision involves a public responsibility. The magnitude of our housing crisis requires a massive commitment of resources and energy.” As they then stated in their February 2011 brief on the Trust Fund, “Unfortunately, such a ‘massive commitment’ has not been forthcoming.”

The human rights framework is based on the premise that every human being is entitled to basic treatment to ensure their dignity. Whether that premise is grounded in religious, moral, or ethical terms, hopefully we can all agree that every person should have a safe, decent, affordable place to call home, and that where the market fails, the government should provide a structure to ensure that no one is left on the streets.

Unfortunately, this week the House subcommittee on Capital Markets and Government Sponsored Enterprises voted to pass H.R. 2441 eliminating the Trust Fund. Worse, they have shown no indication of proposing any policies that would replace it with a better system of ensuring that every American can enjoy their right to housing.

While religion is sometimes a divisive issue, the human right to housing is one of those shared values that can unite us.  We welcome the Conference’s support, and hope that Americans of all faiths will stand together to tell their congressional representatives that housing is a basic human right, and they need to take the steps to make that right a reality.

- Eric Tars, Human Rights Program Director

Photo credit: Catholic Church

It’s disturbing that millions of people have lost their homes to foreclosure, but at least you’d think that foreclosures would mean more available, affordable homes for low-income renters on the verge of homelessness.  Sadly, you’d be wrong.  Renters lose in the foreclosure crisis too.

One article from Minnesota takes a hard look at the common misperception that foreclosures make renting more affordable.  The reality is that rental costs are increasing, even though the cost of buying a home is falling and banks are holding countless unoccupied and non-revenue producing homes that are costly to maintain.

In Minnesota, for example, statewide rents increased an inflation-adjusted 7 percent from 2000 to 2009 while the income of renters fell 21 percent.  That’s a one-fifth decrease in income.  What would you have to cut out of your budget to live on one-fifth less?  For Edward G. Robinson, the answer is food.  After rent and utilities, Robinson lives on $20 per month.  To get by, he eats at a Dorothy Day drop-in center. (more…)

This week the New York Times caught on to a trend that’s sweeping the nation: as J.R. Fleming, co-founder of the Chicago Anti-Eviction Campaign who spoke earlier this month at our National Forum on the Human Right to Housing put it, “we…put homeless people into people-less housing.”

The article starts off with the scene of the Biggs family moving into their home, as supporters surround them and chant “fight, fight, fight, ‘cause housing is a human right.” While most families move on their own, or with the help of a few friends, the Biggs need the support of a group, the Chicago Anti-Eviction Campaign, because their move is not a traditional one – they don’t have a legal right to move in.

This forceful re-examination of the laws by which certain people are left out on the street even when there are countless empty homes in their communities is central to the notion of housing as a human right. During the civil rights struggle, people confronted the long-accepted laws of segregation and discrimination by challenging them in direct actions like sit-ins at lunch counters, as well as working through the courts and the legislatures. We are now engaged in the continuation of that struggle, as the Biggs and the Anti-Eviction Campaign take the first steps to say just because it’s the law, doesn’t mean the law is just.

The idea of housing as a human right doesn’t necessarily mean that every homeless family should be allowed to move into a vacant house and take that property away from its legal owner. But it does challenge us to look at the injustice of homelessness, and the laws that perpetuate it, in a new way. And there may be new models of community homeownership and renting that can co-exist with our present private ownership model that will provide the bridge to a more just future.

The Times article concludes with Ms. Biggs “showing off the freshly painted rooms and the used dining room set given to her by a neighbor,” and tonight, the Biggs will be enjoying dinner around their dining room table. I hope we will soon look back on this struggle to ensure that every family can share a dinner table in their own home the way we look back on the civil rights struggle to share lunch counters: a lesson for the history books, but no longer appropriate in an America that recognizes all its residents’ basic human rights.

-Eric Tars, Human Rights Program Director

Photo credit: Khell Center, Cornell University

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.

- Jeremy Rosen, Policy Director