More Than a Commodity: The Right to Adequate Housing

Abstract

Like rights-based claims to health and food, recognizing housing as a human right in the United States is a contested process marked by a number of promising local campaigns. This chapter outlines a nascent movement to assure decent and affordable housing based on a human rights perspective. Community organizations and legal advocacy groups are increasingly using human rights standards and monitoring processes to help reframe access to housing in the United States. This chapter provides an outline of what the human right to adequate housing means in international law, provides background on US housing policy, and describes the country’s stance on human rights obligations regarding the right to housing. The chapter also addresses the role of community practice in transforming ideas about housing as a human right into action. Through examples of rights-based campaigns for housing at the national level led by the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty (NLCHP) and local organizing in Chicago, Los Angeles, and New Orleans, the authors highlight ways that community-based social workers can participate in the realization of such a right.

The US does not support the “right to adequate housing” or “housing rights,” because such a right does not exist.

—Ameri (as cited in International Women’s Human Rights Clinic, City University of New York School of Law, 2009, p. 1)

Access to adequate housing directly affects other human rights. Without it, employment is difficult to secure and maintain, health is threatened, education is impeded, violence is more easily perpetrated, privacy is impaired, and social relationships are frequently strained. The lack of affordable housing especially places poor people in the impossible position of having to choose between the most basic of human necessities: housing or food, housing or health care, housing or clothing, and so on. While many people think that violations of housing rights only occur amidst the grinding poverty of the developing world, the truth is that we do not have to go far to witness the housing crisis in our own cities and towns. (Gomez & Thiele, 2005)

Appendices

Class Exercises and Additional Resources

For Discussion: Using the Findings of the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Adequate Housing in Advocacy

Raquel Rolnik, the Special Rapporteur on adequate housing, as a component of the right to an adequate standard of living, and on the right to non-discrimination in this context, visited the United States from October 22–November 8, 2009. The Special Rapporteur’s visit focused on subsidized housing, homelessness, and the foreclosure crisis, examining in particular questions of affordability of housing, discrimination, and participation of low income residents in policy and program decisions affecting their lives.

Part I: Review the report of the Special Rapporteur at: http://www.ohchr.org/EN/Issues/Housing/Pages/CountryVisits.aspx (see link for 2010, 13th Session of the Human Rights Council). As you read, consider which of the human rights concerns raised by the Special Rapporteur are relevant to your own community or practice. Does a human rights framework provide added insight or leverage to address housing within your community? Be prepared to discuss your ideas in small groups.

Part II: The Special Rapporteur made specific recommendations to foster meaningful participation of those whose housing was unstable, unsafe, or who did not have housing. These included:

• “Residents of public housing should have direct, active and effective participation in the planning and decision-making process affecting their access to housing. Residents should be seen as essential partners working alongside the Government in transforming public housing” (2010, paragraph 105).

• “The Government should create mechanisms to improve the participation of affected tenants in planning and decision-making processes. Residents’ councils should be directly elected by residents and not appointed by housing agencies” (2010, paragraph 106).

• Public-private partnerships undertaking housing developments should include residents at all stages of planning, implementation, and decision-making” (2010, paragraph 107).

Consider each of the recommendations above and discuss in small groups the extent to which such standards for participation are already in place in your communities. How would you organize to facilitate such participation? What stakeholders would you engage and how?

Organizations Committed to Rights-Based Housing Mobilization in the United States

• Chicago Anti-Eviction Campaign: http://chicagoantieviction.org/

• Housing is a Human Right: http://housingisahumanright.org

• Moratorium NOW! Coalition to Stop Foreclosures, Evictions, and Utility Shutoffs: http://moratorium-mi.org/

• National Economic and Social Rights Initiative: http://www.nesri.org/

• National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty: http://www.nlchp.org/

• Occupy Our Homes: http://occupyourhomes.org/

• OneDC: Organizing Neighborhood Equity: http://www.onedconline.org/

• Organizing for Occupation: http://www.o4onyc.org

• Picture the Homeless: http://www.picturethehomeless.org

• Take Back the Land: http://www.takebacktheland.org

• Urban Justice: http://www.urbanjustice.org/.

For Discussion: Criminalizing Homelessness and Human Rights Mobilization at the Community Level

The National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty has identified the following as practices which criminalize homelessness and violate human rights. Review the list of laws and practices below and then consider the discussion questions in small groups.

• Enactment and enforcement of laws that make it illegal to sleep, sit, or store personal belongings in the public spaces of cities lacking sufficient shelter or affordable housing.

• Selective enforcement against homeless persons of seemingly neutral laws, such as loitering, jaywalking, or open container ordinances.

• Sweeps of city areas in which homeless persons live in order to drive them out of those areas, frequently resulting in the destruction of individuals’ personal property, including important personal documents and medication.

• Enactment and enforcement of laws that punish people for begging or panhandling in order to move poor or homeless persons out of a city or downtown area.

• Enactment and enforcement of laws that restrict groups sharing food with homeless persons in public spaces.

• Enforcement of “quality of life” ordinances related to public activities and hygiene (e.g. public urination) when no public facilities are available to people without housing. (Excerpted from National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty, 2011a, pp. 5–6).

Questions for Discussion

• Which of the laws and policies exist in your community?

• What is the rationale for their use?

• How are these laws/policies regarded by different groups (police, public health or social workers, religious leaders, public officials, business leaders, neighborhood residents)?

• Do representatives from homeless populations have an opportunity to respond to such policies and practices? Are their opinions taken into account in any meaningful way?

• As a community practitioner, how would you initiate a campaign to eliminate these practices and introduce local policies and programs that adhere to principles of the right to adequate housing?

For Discussion: Drafting a “Human Right to Housing” Report Card at the Community or State Levels

The National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty is the leading national organization advancing a human rights claim to housing. Annually it produces a “human right to housing” report card in which it summarizes U.S. progress on implementing the seven elements of the right to housing. Consider the graphic below for use in public education or advocacy about the right to housing in your local community. How might this model of reporting be utilized at a community or state level to draw attention to the failures of housing policies to fulfill human rights obligations?

The report card and an explanation of ratings can be found at: http://www.nlchp.org/HousingReport_2013%20copy.pdf

For more information on the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty visit: http://www.nlchp.org/.