Homelessness Law Blog

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

The National Forum on the Human Right to Housing, to be held June 7-8 at the Thurgood Marshall Center in Washington, D.C., couldn’t come at a better time.

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

Click here for a full schedule of events.

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

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

With the McKinney-Vento Awards coming up tomorrow night, this is the final post in a series on our honorees and distinguished guests.

Shaun Donovan became the 15^th United States Secretary for Housing and Urban Development on January 26, 2009. Believing that homes are the foundation for safe neighborhoods, successful schools, strong families and solid businesses, Donovan has dedicated his career to ensuring access to affordable, quality housing for all Americans.

As the HUD secretary, Donovan chairs the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness which, in June, released Opening Doors: Federal Strategic Plan to Prevent and End Homelessness.

Donovan has served as commissioner of the New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD). He also implemented HPD’s New Housing Marketplace Plan, the largest municipal affordable housing plan in this nation’s history, which planned to build and preserve 165,000 affordable homes. His work at HPD also included involvement with the New York City Acquisition Fund, an award-winning collaboration with banks and organizations to finance affordable housing, an innovative zoning program, a supportive housing plan, and creation of the Center for New York City Neighborhoods, an early response to the foreclosure crisis.

Prior to his service as commissioner of HPD, Donovan worked on financing affordable housing in the private sector and was a visiting scholar at New York University researching the preservation of federally-assisted housing. Donovan also worked as a consultant to the Millennial Housing Commission, strategizing ways to increase the production of multifamily housing. Created by the United States Congress, the commission sought to discover ways to expand housing opportunities nationally.

Donovan returns to HUD, where he previously served during the Clinton administration as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Multifamily Housing. During that time he administered housing programs that helped 1.7 million families gain access to affordable housing. He also served as acting FHA Commissioner during the transition between the Clinton and Bush Administrations.

Prior to this first service at HUD, Donovan worked at the Community Preservation Corporation (CPC) in New York City, a non-profit organization dedicated to lending and development for affordable housing. Donovan has also written on housing policy at the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard University, as well as worked as an architect.

We hope you’ll join us when Secretary Donovan delivers his address on “Ending Homelessness in Our Time” at our 12^th Annual McKinney-Vento Awards tomorrow, October 14, which begins at 6 p.m.  Barbara Ehrenreich, Dechert LLP, the Education Law Center of Pennsylvania, and the formerly homeless Elzer family will be honored at the event.

Click here for more information. Contact Whitney Gent for more information.

Last time I was in New Orleans, about a year ago, I was part of an international human rights fact-finding mission, sent to assess continuing housing rights violations four years after Katrina.  What we saw shocked our conscience: homeless squatters living in buildings with no running water or electricity, holes in the roof and floor, in the heart of one of America’s major cities, while perfectly habitable public housing units were fenced off and torn down with promised replacements years away from completion, and never intended to serve as many poor persons as before.

This time, I came at the invitation of the Department of Housing & Urban Development, to conduct a training for hundreds of fair housing investigators and attorneys on the very human rights standards we were using to assess the violations last year.  It’s a sign of tremendous progress in the recognition of these human rights standards by the domestic branches of government that they chose to include this session as part of their conference, and promises much for the future at the state and local level as these advocates return home to implement what they’ve learned.

But though there has been progress in the hearts and minds of those at HUD, progress is slow to come for those looking for their housing rights on the ground in New Orleans.  My fellow mission-mate, Sam Jackson, of May Day New Orleans, gave me a tour of the public housing sites we visited last year.  Some, such as CJ Peete, have been redeveloped with some families already moved into the mixed income development.  Others, like Lafitte, only had the concrete building foundations poured before the promised redevelopment money dried up.  Now, where hundreds of families used to live stand only empty fields and concrete blocks, with no promise of renewal.  Five years after Katrina, and still people can’t come home.  And those squatters?  Still thousands living in Third World conditions, right here in America.

I hope the progress we’ve made with HUD in accepting these rights means that next year, I’ll be able to write a happier reflection on how New Orleans’ residents are enjoying them.

-Eric Tars, Human Rights Program Director

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…)

In an earlier post, Eric shared his rising hope that the idea that housing is a human right may be gaining some traction among key government officials. Today, I’m feeling it too.

I just got back from hearing a keynote address by HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan at the Housing Justice network conference. It felt like a breath of fresh air—and that’s not just because it’s a beautiful spring-like day in DC. It’s because this Secretary believes and says that housing is a human right! Barbara Sard, formerly of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities and currently special advisor for rental housing at HUD, introduced the Secretary and told this anecdote: A group of activists came to meet with the Secretary and asked him whether he believed that housing is a human right. To their surprise, he said, simply and unequivocally, “Yes.”

Obviously,  saying the words is not enough. But it was refreshing to hear and the right place to start. And I’m giving us some credit for this since the Law Center raised this specifically with him when we met one-on-one. He was interested in thinking about housing through a human rights framework and asked for more information, which we happily sent. Shaun Donovan was my intern many (too many!) years ago, and I know he’s committed to and knowledgeable about homelessness and low-income housing. He’ll need to back up his words with action, and we’ll be holding him accountable.

Still, the words were nice to hear.

-Maria Foscarinis, Executive Director