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2013 Symposium on the Human Right to Housing

Posted on April 30, 2013
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Last week, a capacity crowd of some 130 lawyers, academics and grassroots activists gathered to spend a day discussing the human right to housing, and strategies to build a legal foundation for that right here in the US.

Co-sponsored by NLCHP, the Human Rights Institute of Columbia Law School and the Program on Human Rights in the Global Economy at Northeastern Law School, the Symposium was an inspiring call to action that included concrete examples of progress now being made at the federal, state and local levels to advance the human right to housing for all-and especially for homeless and poor people.

Among those efforts is the growing movement for state level Homeless Persons’ Bills of Rights. Last year, Rhode Island enacted the Rhode Island Homeless Persons’ Bill of Rights, the first such enforceable law in the nation. Now advocates in California, as well as Oregon, Vermont, Connecticut and Missouri are pressing similar campaigns, with support from NLCHP, which also supported the Rhode Island campaign. Last week, the California bill took a critical step forward when the California Assembly’s Judiciary voted it out of committee. Key demands are protections from laws that criminalize homelessness and that discriminate based on housing status.

Undergirding these campaigns is the call for the human right to housing. Protection from discrimination is critically important, but ensuring the right to housing is essential. Because what we’re fighting for is not just protection from arrest for people forced to live in public places because they are without a home. What we truly want, and believe everyone should have in a country that has the resources to provide it, like ours does, is a decent, safe affordable home.

That’s what the human right to housing promises, and what we and those who gathered in NYC last week are working towards. Passing state bills like that now moving forward in CA are a crucially important step in the right direction.

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The Dirty Divide in Downtown Los Angeles: A Call for Public Health Equity and Human Rights in Skid Row

Posted on April 17, 2013
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As a new father, I’m dealing with a lot of crap on a daily basis, literally. When I go out, I always have to think about bringing along a diaper bag, just in case our daughter decides it’s time to go. For myself, in my house I have no worries, and when I’m out, usually there’s a relatively decent restroom in some restaurant or other facility I’ll have access to. But for many living on the streets, where they can safely and cleanly go to the bathroom is a daily concern.

Credit: KCRW http://bit.ly/11e0NOf

Building on a visit last year from the top UN expert on the right to water and sanitation, which focused attention on the cruel and degrading conditions faced by homeless persons without access to adequate sanitation, our partners at the Los Angeles Community Action Network (LA CAN) are launching their new report, The Dirty Divide, which highlights the continued lack of public health infrastructure for poor residents residing in Downtown Los Angeles, with a particular focus on trash services and restrooms.

This report shows how Los Angeles is violating not just with its own health department’s recommendations but international human rights norms. The report’s concerns about lack of trash and restroom services are connected to three key issues: 1) the public health of Skid Row residents should be protected; 2) equity in services between the “New Downtown” and Skid Row should be upheld; and 3) without access to trash cans and restrooms, Skid Row residents are at risk of criminalization under the Safer Cities Initiative which focuses on low-level offenses such as littering or public urination.

Having been part of numerous trainings with LA CAN on human rights – first as trainer, now learning from them more than I share – and having helped organize for the U.N. visit, I’m so happy to see these tools being put to use in The Dirty Divide, which utilizes a human rights framework to examine what the dire shortcomings in Skid Row mean from a rights-based lens.

In order to respond to the human rights violations outlined in this report and begin to ensure public health equity, The Dirty Divide’s recommendations include:  1) Shift current political and governmental priorities and resources from criminalization to housing; 2) Place adequate numbers of trash receptacles in Skid Row and establish frequent trash collection; 3) Increase access to restrooms; and 4) Develop a community health council to address issues for the long-term.

Last year California led the country in adopting a law declaring that every human being has the right to safe, clean, affordable, and accessible water adequate for human consumption, cooking, and sanitary purposes. This year, California is considering AB5, a Homeless Bill of Rights. L.A. should step up and start leading on these issues, rather than avoiding necessary improvements for the most vulnerable living on the streets in Skid Row.

We at the National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty are proud to support LA CAN in this call for L.A. to live up to its human rights obligations, stop treating its citizens like trash, and start treating them like human beings deserving of their basic human dignity. I don’t want my daughter growing up in an America that can’t provide that minimum to its most vulnerable citizens.

-Eric Tars

Director of Human Rights and Children’s Rights Programs

Credit: KCRW http://bit.ly/11e0NOf

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Criminalization of homelessness – local impact, global issue

Posted on April 8, 2013
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As the economic crisis continues at the bottom end of the income spectrum, the past week has brought two victories worth noting, from the most humble of tent encampments to the marble halls of the U.N.’s Palais Wilson in Geneva.

Tent City in Lakewood, NJ

First, our colleagues at the New Jersey Coalition for the Homeless have won a tremendous court victory for those living in Tent City, Lakewood, New Jersey. After fighting the city and county’s efforts to evict them for several years, and pushing, through counter-motions, an alternative vision of the law that says the state was violating their human right to housing (helped, in small part, by assistance from the Law Center), the homeless residents of Tent City have come to a settlement with the city that states, among other things, that  (1) all of Tent City’s current residents may not be ejected by Lakewood unless and until those residents are first offered a plan that provides for (and actually provides) safe and adequate housing for at least a full year; (2) requires Lakewood to dismiss all of the charges that it filed in municipal court and elsewhere about supposed “code violations” in Tent City; and (3) requires the city to provide basic municipal services such as trash removal for the residents until they depart. As Jeffery Wild, lead attorney for the homeless residents said,

“No one can be forced out of where they are now unless they are offered safe and adequate housing indoors. That’s all we ever wanted. We’re not here to defend Tent Cities; no one should have to live in the woods. This is about the right of everyone to have housing.”

Personalized tent city homes in Lakewood, NJ

Second, at the international level, the U.N. Human Rights Committee has requested information from the U.S. government about the criminalization of homelessness in the U.S. Last year, the US Interagency Council on Homelessness issued a report stating that criminalization of homelessness potentially violated the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which the Human Rights Committee oversees. The U.S is in the middle of reporting to the Committee on our compliance with the Covenant, and the Committee put forth its List of Issues, specifying issues which it feels warrant additional discussion before the U.S. engages in an oral hearing this October. Thanks to our own report, put forth in coordination with a broad group of homeless advocates, criminalization of homelessness was for the first time included in that list, confirming our and the U.S. government’s own interpretation that criminalization raises concerns not just under domestic law, but under our international human rights obligations. The Committee will issue further conclusions and recommendations following the U.S. government hearing in October.

Jeff and his legal team have demonstrated the concrete impact that human rights advocacy has at the local level, while we continue to build global standards to further assist in ensuring all people enjoy their basic human rights. While there are more battles to be fought, we celebrate the victories of this past week, and look forward to the day when we no longer need to fight criminalization of homelessness, because everyone has a safe place to call home.

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Houston Conference Advances Rights of Homeless Youth

Posted on March 8, 2013
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On January 25, Law Center Director of Human Rights & Children’s Rights Programs Eric Tars gave the keynote address at the Educational Forum on Homeless Youth in Houston, Texas, hosted by One Voice Texas (OVT). He educated participants about the rights of homeless youth in Texas, shared best practices from other states, and provided direction in their campaign to revise laws and policies to better meet these young people’s needs.

Lillian Aguirre Ortiz, Director of Behavioral Health Policy and Government Relations for OVT, contacted the Law Center following our publication of Alone Without A Home: A State-By-State Review of Laws Affecting Unaccompanied Homeless Youth.

“We can’t thank the Law Center enough for sharing its expertise in this area,” Aguirre Ortiz said following the forum, noting that the knowledge shared by the Law Center and other groups will be critical to OVT and its partners as they develop short and long-term plans to “lead [the] community toward strategic, effective, and concrete solutions that meet the needs of our homeless youth.”

Tars’ keynote followed an opening address by Houston Mayor Annise Parker, who spoke passionately of her personal commitment to ending homelessness, inspired in part by her adoption of a youth who had been kicked out of his home. She called on the entire community to work collaboratively to address the needs of homeless youth, pledging the support of the mayor’s office.

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Housing is a Right

Posted on February 28, 2013
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One of Robert  Frost’s poems includes this exchange, part of a winter conversation between a farmer and his wife:

“Home is the place where, when you have to go there,
They have to take you in.”
“I should have called it
Something you somehow haven’t to deserve.”

To my mind, Frost’s description connotes belonging, community, a sense of place—and a place you have a right to be. And, once you’re there, you cannot be thrown out for no reason, on a moment’s notice, through no fault of your own.

In less poetic terms, these are elements of the human right to housing.

Today millions of people lack that fundamental right: a place where they have to let you in. Millions are homeless—living on the street or in shelters. Many more have lost their own homes and are doubled on with friends or relatives. Yet funding for federal housing assistance has been cuts so deeply that right now only 25 percent of Americans poor enough to qualify actually receive it. That’s why the National Housing Trust Fund is so important: It would create a dedicated source of funding to right this terrible injustice. To see how you can help, click here.

Many more millions of people who now have housing are at risk of losing it: they lack the security of home. Known as “security of tenure,” this element of the human right to housing means that you can’t be evicted without notice, for no good reason. Yet millions of renters now run that risk, when the homes they live in suffer foreclosure. The protecting Tenants at Foreclosure Act, federal  law enacted in 2009, protects tenants, but too often violated. You can read about the law in our new report, Eviction (Without) Notice, which includes the results of our national survey and catalogs violations. To find out how you can help increase compliance, check the recommendations section of the report.

This winter, let’s reflect on the words of the poet—and take action to make home a reality for all.

- Maria Foscarinis, Executive Director

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Using Privilege To Give Voice To The Vulnerable

Posted on January 31, 2013
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Editor’s note: The author composed this piece in mid-January, on one of the coldest days of the month.

With the wind chill, it’s about 15 degrees outside this morning.  This week is shaping up to be the coldest DC has seen in a long time; while all that means for me is an unpleasant wait for the bus, for others it’s a very real threat.  The man who sits on the corner of 16th and K every morning, wishing the speed-walking commuters a nice day, wasn’t there when I walked by and I am really hoping it’s because he’s still at a shelter, or at least some place warm.

Like most people attending law school, I come from a place of relative privilege.  I might not be part of the one percent (and the size of my student loans might terrify me), but I don’t have the first idea what it’s like to be homeless or without a safety net.  So sometimes I feel like the worst kind of elitist – the well-intentioned kind who speaks for people whose experiences they will never truly know.  As POOR Magazine’s cofounder Lisa Gray-Garcia pointed out, “…a privileged person’s distant, disconnected view of someone else’s daily struggle” is hardly a legitimate perspective of what it’s actually like to be homeless.  And yet, I know that the work we do here at the Law Center is truly important on a societal level.  We don’t see the people living on our street corners or park benches – they are human beings who have become part of our landscape.  Call it compassion fatigue or willful ignorance, but the dialogue happening about homelessness today is too often about personal choice, laziness, a feeling of entitlement.  As if not freezing to death was such a ridiculous thing to be entitled to.

In last week’s inaugural address, President Obama said, “A great nation must care for the vulnerable and protect its people from life’s worst hazards and misfortune.”  Too often, the vulnerable are also the most marginalized among us, those whose political voice has been silenced, who already experience daily brutality at the hands of the powerful.  While I can’t do anything about the fact that I was born with this privilege, I can use it to do something meaningful.  Working at the Law Center lets me use it to make a little more space for those folks without a voice to be heard, and to push those in power to follow through on President Obama’s words.

-KT Crossman, Fellow, Program on Human Rights and the Global Economy, Northeastern University School of Law

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Looking Back: A Milestone Year for Homeless Advocacy

Posted on January 22, 2013
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The year 2012 was an important milestone for the Law Center, as we marked the 25th anniversary of the McKinney-Vento Act—the first federal legislation to address homelessness—for which our founder and executive director was a primary advocate.  But while great progress has been made since McKinney-Vento’s passage, there is still much to be done.  That’s why we used the occasion to renew our commitment to finish what we started and end homelessness in America.

The year began with exciting achievements in our civil rights and human rights programs.  In February, after observing Sacramento denying sanitation and safe drinking water to homeless residents during a visit organized by the Law Center, the UN Special Rapporteur on Water and Sanitation wrote an unprecedented letter to Mayor Kevin Johnson, calling the City’s actions a blatant violation of human rights.  This sent a powerful message that the U.S. is accountable to its international treaty obligations and generated strong media coverage, which reinforced the human rights implications, helping to change the political playing field and empowering marginalized homeless advocates.

In April, the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness and Department of Justice released a report that condemns the criminalization of homelessness, drawing heavily on publications from the Law Center.

Read more »

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Homelessness & Human Rights Day

Posted on December 10, 2012
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December 10 is Human Rights Day, a global day of recognition of the basic rights that are fundamental to all human beings.  At the Law Center, we’re taking the opportunity to update our report card on U.S. compliance with the human right to housing for 2012. While there are some bright spots, I’m sorry to say that overall the grades are poor. We have much work yet to do, and I hope we can count on your support going forward.

Safe, decent, affordable housing is a basic human right, recognized globally and defined with specificity in international law. But while the U.S. was a leader in establishing and championing international human rights law and institutions over 60 years ago, and continues to speak out as a leader on the global stage, unfortunately here at home our words do not match our reality. Read more »

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Reflections on the Human Right to Housing

Posted on November 19, 2012
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For the last three months, I’ve gotten to live in D.C. and work for the organization that inspired me to go to law school. Sure, that sounds like a white lie you tell your boss to get brownie points, but it’s the honest truth.  I’ve been so lucky—in this fellowship and in life in general.

My whole life,  I have had a roof over my head, enough food to eat, and access to doctors and good schools.  All of that has allowed me to get where I am today.  Through stories I’ve read from the Law Center and other organizations, I know how different my life could be and I hate the idea that some people are held back by lack of opportunity.

Explaining what I’ve done at the Law Center is challenging.  When I first started my position, my mom wanted to know what type of projects I was working on.  My main focus was on establishing housing as a human right in the United States, but it’s hard for people to wrap their heads around that.  Even with a background in affordable housing and some exposure to international law, it took lots of reading and listening and critical thinking to make it all click for me.  We always talk about human rights as something other countries need to work on.  After all, we’re the United States of America—we’re human rights heroes, right?

No matter how patriotic you are, it’s hard to ignore the fact that the human right to housing has not been realized in the United States.  And while no one is saying the U.S. government has an obligation to hand out free houses to every American, the right to housing does require us to address the growing homelessness crisis.

We can’t solve this problem overnight, of course.  But I hope we can all agree that, while we work to end homelessness and realize the right to housing in the long-term, we must at a minimum provide emergency shelter to those who need it.  No, man, woman, or child should have to sleep on a park bench or a sidewalk.

One small step at a time, we can make housing a right, not a privilege.  Housing creates stability, security, and a solid foundation for success.  I am lucky.  But luck should not be a factor when it comes to something as basic as having a roof over your head.

- Shelbey Wolf, PHRGE Fellow

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The Return of the Rapporteur

Posted on October 31, 2012
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Three years to the week since her six-city mission to the U.S., the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to adequate housing, Raquel Rolnik, returned to the U.S. to present her report on the financialization of housing to the UN General Assembly.  In addition to presenting at the UN, she also presented her report at an event organized by last year’s McKinney-Vento Personal Achievement Awardee, Rob Robinson, at the CUNY Graduate Center.

The Rapporteur’s new report is impressive, analyzing the impact of the slow but sure change of the broad public conception of housing from homes designed to meet an individual’s basic needs to an investment vehicle to drive corporate profits.

For those interested in talking about housing as a human right, this report is a must-read, providing a principled framework for returning the discussion from this profit-based vision of housing to one where housing is designed to meet people’s needs.  As some of the other speakers noted, the fact that the U.S. has far more vacant homes and apartments (“people-less homes”) than homeless people demonstrates how severe the profit paradigm has become.

I was asked to speak on the legacy of the Rapporteur’s 2009 mission to the U.S.  I see this legacy existing in two major areas—the organized, educated activists she left behind, and the policy shifts catalyzed by the recommendations in her mission report– and the advocacy of said activists.

The Rapportuer’s visit was coordinated by over 70 organizations in 6 cities, as well as dozens of others who presented testimony at our National Forum on the Human Right to Housing in Washington, D.C.  In all, she heard from over 2,000 individuals.  And those individuals and organizations left with a deeper understanding of how and why it is important to talk about housing and homelessness as human rights issues in the U.S.

When the U.S. prepared for its Universal Periodic Review of human rights policy by the UN Human Rights Council, these same activists were able to participate in government consultations, successfully making housing the “number one human rights issue” brought to the government’s attention.

The Rapporteur’s report echoed the voices of the people she heard, with over 30 pages of analysis and more than 30 concrete recommendations, running the full gamut of housing issues.  Among other recommendations, and at our request, she called for the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness to issue a report on constructive alternatives to the criminalization of homelessness—which it did this year, in conjunction with the Department of Justice.  And thanks to her report and our advocacy, it included an unprecedented statement that criminalization not only raises constitutional concerns, but implicates U.S. treaty obligations as well.  This is the first time in history that a U.S. agency has said a domestic practice may violate international human rights standards.

We are literally changing the way our government talks about housing and homelessness.  That is the legacy of the rapporteur’s visit—a legacy we hope to continue growing.

We look forward to working with the Rapporteur on her new report on the security of tenure, and continuing to use her previous reports to help us return our national dialogue to the core belief that housing is a human right and implement the policies to realize it.

- Eric Tars, Human Rights & Children’s Rights Program Director

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