Homelessness Law Blog

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.

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…)

February is Black History Month, and though the Law Center is mindful of how race intersects our work all year ‘round, I’d like to take the opportunity afforded by the holiday to blog about one particular aspect of race and housing law.

The foreclosure crisis has claimed nearly five million homes in the last four years, and almost no community has escaped unscathed.  From inner city Detroit to rural Idaho, homeowners to apartment-dwellers, foreclosures have affected Americans from every walk of life.  But there can be no denying that the crisis has had a disproportionately negative effect on communities of color.   According to the Center for Responsible Lending (CRL), about 8% of all African Americans and Latino homeowners lost their homes due to foreclosure compared to only 4.5% of whites, even though white homeowners account for 2/3 of the market.  These homeowners not only lost the place they lived, they most likely lost their greatest asset and sustained serious damage to their credit and financial stability, costs that only add to the wealth gap between the races.

The well-documented “spillover” effects of foreclosure—including vacancy and blight, plummeting real estate values for families able to remain in their homes, and increased crime rates—will continue to be felt more widely in African American and Latino neighborhoods, which CRL estimates will lose close to $200 billion in property values by 2012.  And 40% of Americans at risk of losing their homes due to foreclosure are renters, a group where low-income people of color have always been overrepresented. (more…)

It will be a bitter-sweet Valentine’s Day for many across the country who have already lost their homes due to the foreclosure and economic crises, but should the budget proposals put forth by the House come to pass, things will get even worse.

Even as the need for assistance continues to increase with the ongoing economic crisis, as many as 750,000 Section 8 tenants could be cut off from federal assistance as early as this spring, if the proposed $101 billion cut is applied across the board to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.  At the same time, the Obama Administration will release its request for FY 2012 today.  The Administration is weighing a cut of $1 billion from the $4 billion Community Development Block Grant program, which funds local housing programs, and a 5% cut to HUD overall.  The President has proposed a five year “freeze” on all domestic programs. But reducing or eliminating the Mortgage Interest Deduction, as recommended by Obama’s Deficit Reduction Commission, would save $104 billion – enough to create a homeowner tax credit for most homes, build new housing, expand vouchers and even reduce the deficit!

Congress seems determined to pass cuts to spending regardless of the consequences to people living in their towns. But imagine 750,000 parents having to explain to their children that they are losing their home. Imagine millions of hearts breaking. That’s why on Valentine’s Day, low-income tenants from over 15 cities coast-to-coast are holding coordinated actions calling on Congress to “Have a Heart, Save Our Homes” from the proposed cuts to the housing budget.

Join with these tenants by calling your Representatives and Senators to help them realize the human consequences of this arbitrary budget slashing, and ask them to “Have a Heart, Save Our Homes!”  See our allies at the National Alliance of HUD Tenants for talking points and more information.

-Eric Tars, Human Rights Program Director

In a previous legal internship at Neighborhood Legal Services Association in Pittsburgh, PA, I specialized in representing low-income tenants in housing cases. From the beginning, I was eager to take on landlords, who I saw as the evil oppressors of low-income people in our society. As college students, my roommates and I had our share of injustices as renters, and I was convinced that landlords played a huge role in the current hardships facing poor Americans. I marched into courtrooms, guns blazing, only to be hit with the reality that most judges had no qualms about evicting people. No matter how sympathetic my client’s story or how egregious a landlord’s behavior, the law was usually not in the tenant’s favor.

I quickly learned that there are two sides to every story, and that some landlords were hit just as hard by the current economic crisis as their tenants. Now, I am seeing further evidence of this through my work at the National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty. When contacting local housing advocates to identify violations they see occurring under the Protecting Tenants at Foreclosure Act, I am continually hearing about the high number of tenants being unlawfully evicted and forced into homelessness because of the numerous rental properties undergoing foreclosure.  Due to their landlords not being able to pay the mortgage, these tenants are feeling the trickledown effect of the foreclosure crisis despite never owning a home. In trying to reach the most beneficial outcome for my client, I realized that compassion for the landlord’s situation, along with a firm declaration of my client’s rights as tenants, often went a long way. (more…)

Yesterday, the Huffington Post featured a front page story about the “The New Face of Homelessness.” Within hours, thousands of readers posted comments, many telling of their own personal struggles with facing foreclosure, eviction, and homelessness.  Their stories are harrowing, and they underscore our need to do much  more to prevent and end homelessness in these troubling times. Here is just a sampling of the stories that were told:

“We’ve been struggling for a few years now. This is not new. We can barely keep enough food in the house all month. I can’t remember the last time I bought anything like clothes for myself. Plus the IRS takes any income tax we get in for student loans I’ve defaulted on. My little girl is severely handicappe­d and I cannot work because I care for her 24/7…The­y cut her SSI in half. They’ve stopped paying for her seizure medicine out of the blue. The price of food is insane. The cost of renting a decent home has not gone down. Utilities keep going up too. But income has been cut. We live a bare bones existence. There is nothing left to cut from our budget.” – susiesiouxsie

“I am presently on hold with the DC unemployme­nt office waiting to apply for extended unemployme­nt compensati­on, and this hold music is maddening. It’s been 30 minutes—thankfully it’s free to call on google. It is so easy for your life to change for the worse like this, no matter how careful you are. I’m educated, I had a few months’ worth of savings to live on, and here I am…still looking for a job. If I had kids to support, we would be in a shelter by now.” – ckevere  (more…)

As I sit in our warm and comfortable office this holiday season, I don’t feel like celebrating. I’m angry and frustrated – frustrated that in a time where people are struggling, our government seems to be looking at how it can be meaner to the growing number of people in need, not more compassionate. Just look at what we’ve seen in the public policy arena in recent weeks:

First, the City Council of the District of Columbia considered legislation that would require homeless persons to provide proof of residency before being allowed to access a shelter. And the law’s backers, in promoting their bill, declared explicitly that it was intended to prevent homeless people from flooding DC shelters during hypothermia season, when it is too cold to sleep and live outdoors. This bill passed on its first reading, with jingoist councilmembers demanding that DC resources be reserved for DC residents, and ignoring the reality that low income people move constantly between the District, Maryland, and Virginia. Given the first vote, it won’t be surprising if the bill is approved a second time and signed into law. If it is, we can expect more people to die on our city’s streets this winter.

And Washington isn’t the only city deciding to punish poor people in tough times. Word broke last week that the City of New York is conducting an experiment to test its homelessness prevention program.  What’s the experiment? They’re accepting some eligible applicants and denying others, when money is available, just to examine whether helping people prevent homelessness really works. How dare we study people in need as if they were sub-human lab rats? What re-examination of the obvious is next? Next time it rains should we give ten people umbrellas and let ten go without, and see who gets wetter? Perhaps, as many commenters recommended on the New York Times website, we should divide up the wealthy Americans about to receive a great big tax cut. We’ll give half the cut and see whether they create more jobs than the other half, who will be taxed at higher rates so they can serve as a control group.

Speaking of taxes, before President Obama and Congressional Republicans struck a deal last week, tax provisions to benefit corporations had been linked all year with a billion dollars for the National Housing Trust Fund – designed to produce new units of badly needed affordable housing. But when the final deal was struck – the tax changes stayed, while the housing money was nowhere to be found. It will be quite a holiday – as long as you work for a bank that’s foreclosing on homeowners, and aren’t a low wage employee struggling to maintain a job and a place to live.

So what’s most frustrating about this? Perhaps it’s the feeling that our public officials just don’t seem troubled by all of this. Except maybe for one – Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders. In an extraordinary display, Senator Sanders took the Senate floor last Friday and held it for more than eight hours.  He spoke passionately about the struggles of working families and other low income Americans, and appealed to our better angels during this holiday season. Thank you, Senator Sanders, for giving a voice to everything I’ve been thinking. I just hope President Obama, Congressional leaders, and local government officials were listening. If they were, perhaps we can look forward to a positive 2011 policy agenda that offers compassionate and fair solutions to difficult social problems.

-Jeremy Rosen, Policy Director

“While our work in Geneva is done, our work here at home is just beginning.”

Eric Tars, human rights program director at the National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty has just returned to the U.S. from the United Nations Universal Periodic Review. He brings back news of three key outcomes of the process:
1. Thousands of American advocates have now been better educated in human rights standards – which they can use to help make human rights a reality at home.
2. Dozens of government officials, many of them in high positions in the federal government, have been educated as well. They now have an increased awareness of human rights standards and understand they must play a role in implementation.
3. There has been a substantial change in dialogue around human rights in the United States through this process.

The next review won’t occur for another four years. In the meantime, we’ll be working hard to hold the government accountable to the Human Rights Council’s recommendations, so that the human right to housing can be realized in the United States.

No, mortgage companies aren’t embracing futuristic robot technology.  Instead, the public is just beginning to learn about a time-honored industry practice that just might invalidate tens of thousands of foreclosures around the country.

Last Wednesday, a company called Ally Financial quietly ordered its agents in 23 states to halt any sales, evictions, cash-for-keys deals, and other foreclosure transactions.  According to a two-page memo obtained by Bloomberg News, the company was considering “corrective action in connection with some foreclosures” in the affected states, which include foreclosure hotspots like Florida and Ohio.

Beneath Ally’s smooth technical language lies a troubling revelation with potentially disastrous implications for the massive industry that has grown up around the foreclosure crisis.  According to the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, and others, Ally used to be GMAC Mortgage, an entity that received three federal bailouts totaling more than $17 billion since 2008.  After rebranding as Ally, Inc., the company began servicing mortgages for some of the nation’s largest lenders.  In the wake of the housing crash, a great deal of Ally’s business involves executing foreclosures—in other words, verifying and signing the affidavits that judges rely on to determine whether a lender can seize a home.  And as the market continues to spiral out of control, homeowners’ losses are Ally’s gain: the more foreclosures out there to process, the more fees it and other companies can rack up.  And now it looks like good old-fashioned greed may call tens of thousands of foreclosures into question. (more…)

An important aspect of Wall Street reform is the creation of a new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which will take charge of nearly all federal consumer protection regulation – including regulation of mortgages, student loans, credit cards, and other financial products.  The new Bureau might even be able to help us spread the word about the Protecting Tenants at Foreclosure Act (PTFA).

Why does the Bureau matter to people concerned about ending homelessness?  Well, what helped kick-start the financial crisis?  The push for universal homeownership, which led to the issuance of risky subprime mortgages.  And once home values plunged, many Americans found themselves held prisoner by crippling consumer debt.  The new Bureau can’t make those debts disappear, but it will be able to write fair rules that help give low income families the chance to stay financially stable, and avoid homelessness.

President Obama is now faced with a decision on who to appoint as the Bureau’s new director.  It should be Harvard Law Professor Elizabeth Warren, who is currently heading up the Congressional Oversight Panel tasked with overseeing implementation of TARP.  In that role, she has been a passionate advocate for helping homeowners avoid foreclosure, unafraid to criticize the actions of an Administration that she supports as too little, too late.  The new Bureau was Warren’s idea, and she worked closely on the legislation with consumer and affordable housing groups.  She knows what PTFA is, and why it’s important.  And finally, she’s got the Jon Stewart seal of approval.

- Jeremy Rosen, Policy Director