No Place Like Home: The U.N. on America's Housing System

Housing is a human right. That's not a phrase you hear often in our
political discourse, even though the foreclosure crisis and recession
have made shelter an increasingly precarious resource for millions
across the country. On the most basic level, is it that unreasonable to
think human beings have a right to a roof over their heads? From a
philosophical angle, what does it mean for an individual, family, or
group not to have a place to call home, and how does that kind of
physical insecurity affect a community's ability to thrive?

An international perspective might help us square the hierarchy of needs. A United Nations Human Rights Council report on the U.S. housing system articulates the bleak realization
now dawning on a divided America: there aren't enough homes for
everyone, and depending on your racial, ethnic or economic background,
your right to shelter is rapidly crumbling down.

The report, presented by Special Rapporteur on housing Raquel Rolnik,
identifies key housing injustices: institutionalized discrimination,
poverty, a freewheeling real estate market, the bias of policymakers
who fail to see the link between homelessness and building sustainable
homes.

While
largely based on a recent tour of six cities, the study traces the
history of postwar housing segregation, from the warehousing of poor
Black families in rental tracts to the redlining of suburbia into a
white-only zone. Today, unmet needs continue to blight the housing
landscape:

In past years there were significant
cuts in low-income housing assistance programmes. Budget cuts in the
1980s resulted in the gradual erosion and poor maintenance of the
public housing system. Further subsequent funding cuts have also
significantly affected the preservation of public housing. By the early
1990s, hundreds of thousands of public housing units had become
dilapidated. Over the past decade there has been a net loss of
approximately 170,000 public housing units due to deterioration and
decay, and much of the current public housing stock needs substantial
repairs and rehabilitation. However, annual funding for public housing
fell by 25 per cent between 1999 and 2006.

When federal funding is inadequate, housing agencies
reduce their own expenses. Measures have included shifting units to
tenants with higher incomes (who can be charged higher rents than
lower-income households but typically have less need for assistance),
or cutting back in areas such as security or maintenance.

The study also notes that the Section 8 housing voucher program,
despite purporting to offer residents "choice" in the housing market,
is so limited that it serves only a portion of eligible low-income
families, while the supply of affordable public housing evaporates.

Other problems are ingrained in the architecture of exclusion:

The link between housing and health was
stressed to the Special Rapporteur throughout her visit. Poor housing
conditions expose residents -- especially children -- to a number of
diseases. Most residents of public housing with whom the Special
Rapporteur spoke complained of asthma, attributed to mould from poor
maintenance of units. A resident in Los Angeles described living in
slum housing conditions with rats, cockroaches, bedbugs, deteriorated
piping and lead-based paint, and as a result developing chronic
asthma....

During the mission, the Special Rapporteur observed many
families living in subsidized housing units in conditions of severe
overcrowding. This was particularly the case amongst immigrant families
in Los Angeles, and most strikingly on Pine Ridge Native American
Reservation, where it was described as commonplace to have three to
four families living in a three-bedroom house. The conditions in the
houses on the reservation were the worst seen by the Special Rapporteur
during her mission, evidence of the urgent and severe need for
additional subsidized housing units there.

Housing inequality--exacerbated by the subprime crisis and its
disproportionate impact communities of color--has a ripple effect on
other human rights to educational and economic opportunity:

The 2008 concluding observations of the Committee on
the Elimination of Racial Discrimination on the report of the United
States expressed deep concern that minority groups are
disproportionately concentrated in poor areas characterized by
substandard housing conditions. The Committee's recommendations on this
issue are firmly supported by the Special Rapporteur. The Committee
also stated its concern regarding the de facto racial segregation in
United States public schools. In many communities this issue is
directly linked to housing, as some public school districts are funded
by the property taxes of the local community, thus providing more
resources to schools in wealthier neighbourhoods.

As those with no homes at all reflect the worst forms of
discrimination, a racially polarized and stigmatized population that is
systematically undercounted. Despite some movement toward more
equitable treatment, policymakers continue to criminalize the homeless
and needlessly break apart families.

More than 1.5 million children in the United States
experience homelessness each year. In many cases, there are no adequate
shelter facilities where parents and children can stay together and
children are often removed from their parents and placed in foster
care. The Family Unification Program (FUP) which aims to prevent this
practice urgently needs more funds. A positive step is the resolution
introduced in June 2009 by Congresswoman Maxine Waters in the House of
Representatives on the right of children to adequate housing (H. Res.
582). While not yet adopted by Congress, this resolution recognizes the
right of children and youth to adequate housing and states that
projects that provide services to parents and other caretakers to
prevent possible homelessness of youth in crisis should be created and
maintained.

The report offers various recommendations for improving housing
stock and developing more sustainable housing and home lending
policies--such as the elimination of housing barriers facing formerly incarcerated people. One of the last suggestions is more open-ended:

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.

This idea embodies the core of housing as a right rather than a privilege.
Underserved communities have for decades been forced to accept the
policies handed down by bureaucrats who claim to know best where and
how the poor should live. To make housing a truly responsive and
equitable system, it requires a political framework
that respects residents as central stakeholders, entitled not only to a
place to call home, but to the power and responsibility of real
ownership.