HUMAN RIGHT TO HOUSING PROGRAM

Decent housing, supporting healthy and stable communities, is essential to civic and political participation, health and overall human advancement.  Yet, governmental planning policies, particularly their approach to development, rarely exhibit an intention of guaranteeing this basic need.  Indeed, public commitment to universal access to affordable and quality housing is dangerously low. 

In the United States, there is an overwhelming consensus that we face a severe market failure with regard to housing.  There is also ongoing debate, analysis, and no shortage of opinions on how to address the “housing crisis.”  In the midst of this clamor, however, there lies a deafening silence on the lack of affordable and guaranteed housing as a profound crisis of human rights.  Cities and towns across the country have grown rapidly and re-developed without ensuring that the process of development safeguards fundamental human rights.  Public housing has been demolished and previously affordable housing has become prohibitively expensive.  In this context, whole communities, mostly working class, are continually being displaced from neighborhoods, in many cases where families have lived for generations.  Increasing homelessness, overcrowding, and declining quality of life for families and individuals all painfully reflect the human costs of this predatory redevelopment.

NESRI’s Human Right to Housing Program, which grew out of the Special Project on the Human Rights of Hurricane Survivors, works with community-based organizations to support their social justice campaigns through the use of human rights.  NESRI will support partners with training, analysis, research and documentation, human rights messaging, and coalition building.  As communities continue to face massive demolitions, predatory redevelopment, and policies that directly attack their quality of life, NESRI will work with communities in the fight for their human right to housing and participatory development.

UN Special Rapporteur on Adequate Housing Visits U.S.

In October 2008, UN Special Rapporteur on Adequate Housing Raquel Rolnick visited New York City and San Francisco.  NESRI, the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty, Housing Rights Committee of San Francisco and Western Regional Advocacy Project organized Special Rapporteur Rolnick's meetings with housing rights and community groups in the respective cities. The meetings were in preparation for her official visit to the United States that is scheduled to take place in 2009.  NESRI will be one of the lead organizers for the official visit.

Human Right to Housing Program Initiatives

New National Housing Coalition!!!
Campaign to Restore National Housing Rights
The Campaign to Restore National Housing Rights is a coalition of housing rights organizations and community groups around the country that is calling on the national government to reclaim its historic commitment to provide adequate housing for everyone. The campaign has been meeting with Representative Maxine Waters’ office (Chair of the House Subcommittee on Housing and Community Opportunity) and requesting that she conduct congressional field hearings on the crisis in affordable rental housing, including public housing demolitions, under-funding of Section 8 and rising homelessness.  As poor and low income communities are disproportionately impacted by the national foreclosure crisis, we hope the hearings will bring needed attention to the plight facing these communities.  The hearings will be aimed at highlighting the crisis in housing facing poor communities, moving forward progressive legislation in this area, and advancing the notion of a human right to housing within the United States. 

Building a Human Rights Approach to Public Housing
Public housing is an important strategy to ensure the human right to housing for all.  NESRI works to support communities living in or displaced from public housing, and currently partners with May Day New Orleans.  Through solidarity letters, coalition building and public information campaigns, NESRI supports May Day New Orleans, a public housing resident organization, to ensure that its campaign is reaching local, national and international audiences.  May Day advocates on behalf of former New Orleans residents of public housing to ensure their right to return and participation in the city’s rebuilding efforts.

Public Education and Training
NESRI produces public education materials on the human right to housing, and works to popularize the use of human rights principles with respect to issues around participatory development.  NESRI also trains organizers and community leaders around the country on the human rights framework and strategies for incorporating the framework into local activism.

 Katrina/Tsunami Transnational Exchange
In partnership with the Asian Coalition for Housing Rights, the Urban Poor Consortium and community-based organizations in the Gulf Coast, NESRI facilitates exchange of information between survivor activists of the Asian Tsunami and survivor activists of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita to share strategies for community participation and a post-disaster rebuilding approach that is grounded in human rights. 

Basic Information on the Right to Housing

Everyone has a fundamental human right to housing. It is the government ’s obligation to guarantee that everyone can exercise this right.  The right to housing guarantees the right to live in security, peace and dignity.  This right must be provided to all persons irrespective of income or access to economic resources.  The right to housing should not be narrowly defined or restricted to viewing housing as a commodity, wholly dependent on market forces.  But, it should instead be viewed as a fundamental resource needed for ensuring human development and civic participation. For more information on the Human Right to Housing, click >>>