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Reports / Articles |
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February 2000
People Without Housing by J. David
Hulchanski "States
should undertake, at the national level, all necessary measures for the
realization of the right to development and shall ensure, inter-alia,
equality of opportunity for all in their access to basic resources,
education, health services, food, housing, employment and the fair
distribution of income. … Appropriate economic and social reforms should
be carried out with a view to eradicating all social injustices." –
Declaration on the Right to Development, Article 8.1 Nations such as Canada and the United
States, two of the most economically prosperous on earth, have organized
their public and private institutions in such a manner that mass
homelessness is now one of the ‘normal’ outcomes. A growing number of
people are excluded from having an adequate and secure place to live. For
some this is a temporary situation, for some an occasional situation, for
others it is a long-term reality. These are people who once had housing
but are now unhoused. Having no place to live means being
excluded from all that is associated with having a home, a surrounding
neighbourhood and a set of established community networks. It means being
exiled from the mainstream patterns of day-to-day life. Without a physical
place to call ‘home’ in the social, psychological and emotional sense,
the hour-to-hour struggle for physical survival replaces all other
possible activities. Having no fixed address, however, is
only the most obvious characteristic of this group of excluded poor. They
are also people with no fixed status. The homeless are people who have passed
from one ‘status slot’ in society to a situation that has no status.
The discrimination and unequal treatment is as complete as it possibly can
be. They cannot access or enjoy any of the rights or opportunities of
people who are adequately housed. In the ordinary course of day-to-day
life, they are in a state of ‘social abeyance.’ They are dependent on
emergency services for their basic survival. These services are not
provided in a comprehensive and systematic fashion so as to help people
‘exit’ their social abeyance as quickly as possible. Rather, the
emergency services have emerged on a haphazard basis and have proven to be
inadequate by many forms of evaluation and research. The Right to Housing It is now very common to hear the
assertion that people have a ‘right to housing.’ Although one need not
resort to the International Bill of Rights to conclude that mass
homelessness is a legally, let alone morally, reprehensible state of
affairs, adequate housing is indeed an internationally recognized human
right. Article 25(1) of the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights refers specifically to adequate housing:
"Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for health
and well-being ... including food, clothing, housing." According to
article 11 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural
Rights: "The
States Parties to the present Covenant recognize the right of everyone to
an adequate standard of living for himself and his family, including
adequate food, clothing and housing, and to the continuous improvement of
living conditions. The States Parties will take appropriate steps to
ensure the realization of this right..." A person or household’s right to
adequate housing is violated when the nation fails to continue making
progress to the extent that its resources allow. The drafters of the Covenant on
Economic, Social and Cultural Rights recognized that no nation could solve
its housing problems all at once. Continual improvement is the
assessment criteria in the Covenant. There must be measurable progress. Each country must set for itself
achievable and measurable benchmarks for progressive realization of this
and related social and economic rights. It must also identify and address
all forms of discrimination. Growing homelessness is one clear sign of
failure to make progress. ‘Dehousing’
Processes are
Human Rights Violations Countries with homeless people amidst
great prosperity have created and are maintaining homeless-making
processes. These are the ‘normal’ day-to-day mechanisms which result
in people becoming unhoused and remaining unhoused. These are dehousing
processes. The reason there are so many – and an
increasing number of – people becoming dehoused and remaining unhoused
in North America has to do with the relationship between trends in housing
costs and the cash resources available to households. These are: housing
and job market conditions; public policies relating to housing and income
assistance programs; and cultural patterns such as discrimination due to
racism and sexism, and negative community stereotypes about poverty and
the poor. Structural conditions must change to create a context in which
individual-level interventions will have a significant and lasting impact. The relationship between housing costs
and household income is central to explaining the growth in the number of
people without housing. Housing costs have increased and the
availability of low-rent housing has declined. Rental housing has been
lost in large numbers to demolition and conversion to other uses. Not
enough new low-rent public or private housing is being built. At the same
time, the real incomes and the range of social benefits for the poor have
declined. Dehousing processes are human rights
violations. They result in the failure of people to obtain one of the
necessities of human life and one of the essential elements of achieving
an adequate standard of living. A society with dehousing mechanisms
must take action to stop the increase in the number of people being
dehoused and create an implementation plan with targets for eliminating
existing and preventing any further homelessness. A good beginning is to accept as a
policy objective the wording in Article 31 of the European Social Charter: "With
a view to ensuring the effective exercise of the right to housing, the
Parties undertake to take measures designed: to promote access to housing
of an adequate standard; to prevent and reduce homelessness with a view to
its gradual elimination; to make the price of housing accessible to those
without adequate resources." Since poverty is the key cause of
homelessness, Article 30 of the European Social Charter expresses another
objective North America needs to accept: "With
a view to ensuring the effective exercise of the right to protection
against poverty and social exclusion, the Parties undertake: (a) to take
measures within the framework of an overall and co-ordinated approach to
promote the effective access of persons who live or risk living in a
situation of social exclusion or poverty, as well as their families, to,
in particular, employment, housing, training, education, culture and
social and medical assistance; (b) to review these measures with a view to
their adaptation if necessary." Housing Rights Challenges There are indeed many barriers to
eliminating homelessness. In countries like Canada and the US,
the barriers are not caused by a lack of financial or other physical
resources. In a housing system dominated by market provision and market
allocation the majority of households can afford to buy their
bundle of housing rights. This is one reason the voting majority who are
generally contented with their housing rarely support, and indeed often
oppose, measures aimed at the provision of adequate housing for those in
need. Organizing around homelessness as a
human rights violation provides yet another strong rationale for people
and organizations to make moral claims upon governments and the
electorate. Governments must develop national and
regional housing strategies containing specific targets (e.g. for wealthy
Western nations, the elimination of mass homelessness within three to five
years). The struggle for social justice in
relation to the provision of adequate housing for all should include, but
not be limited to, a struggle over constitutional and international human
rights claims. These claims and court challenges can be one important part
of the struggle, a struggle that must, in addition, be waged through
political parties, social movements, demonstrations, protests, boycotts,
strikes, civil disobedience, grassroots activism, and critical commentary
and art. State Acts and
Omissions that Infringe (a) Carrying out, sponsoring,
tolerating or supporting the practice of forced evictions; (b) Demolishing or destroying homes or
dwellings as a punitive measure; (c) Actively denying basic services
such as water, heating or electricity, to sectors of society, despite a
shown ability to provide these; (d) Acts of racial or other forms of
discrimination in the housing sphere; (e) Adoption of legislation or policies
clearly inconsistent with housing rights obligations, particularly when
these result in homelessness, greater levels of inadequate housing, the
inability of persons to pay for housing and so forth; (f) Repealing legislation consistent
with, and in support of, housing rights, unless obviously outdated or
replaced with equally or more consistent laws; (g) Unreasonable reductions in public
expenditures on housing and other related areas, in the absence of
adequate compensatory measures; (h) Overtly prioritizing the housing
interests of high-income groups when significant portions of society live
without their housing rights having been achieved; (i) Constructing or allowing the
building of housing upon unsafe or polluted sites threatening the lives
and health of future occupants; (j) Harassing, intimidating or
preventing non-governmental and community-based organizations and
grassroots movements and groups concerned with housing rights from
operating freely. The
Right to Adequate Housing,
NY and Geneva: U.N. Centre for Human Rights, Human Rights Studies Series
7, 1996. UN Doc. E.96.XIV.3. ISBN 92-1-154120-4. For more information, contact TDRC at tdrc@tdrc.net |