FEDERAL HOMELESS POLICY UPDATE
October 7th marks the 15th anniversary of the Housing Now march on Washington DC. That day an estimated 250,000 people converged on the Capitol Mall to call for an end to homelessness and to secure the right to housing for all. Arriving by foot, bus, and plane, anti-poverty fighters, housing activists, labor unionists, members of faith-based organizations, students, and no shortage of celebrities gathered together to challenge one of the most obvious and glaring examples of the failure of the American economic system-the country’s inability to adequately house its own citizens.
Sadly, since that day, a case of collective amnesia has seemingly descended on the U.S. populace regarding its fellow citizens’ right to a roof. Instead of standing out as a watershed in the housing rights movement and an important building block in the ongoing struggle for social justice, the Housing Now march has been reduced to a historical footnote by a combination of lowered expectations and good old-fashioned political opportunism. In fact, to listen to people talk in DC and elsewhere these days, you’d think that the march—or, more important, the spirit and political impulse animated by the event—never took place. What’s more, you’d think the goal of “ending” homelessness was the recent invention of a single organization, the “inside the Beltway” crowd, or the current Administration.
To be sure, in recent years, the guiding principles in our effort to end homelessness have become increasingly modest and incremental, and more marginalized than ever—if that is even possible. We’ve gone from demanding housing for all to settling for a cynical clean-up-the-streets federal policy charade of “10-Year Plans to End [‘Chronic’] Homelessness.” More significantly, in the process, we’ve gone from understanding homelessness as a consequence of misplaced budget and social priorities, within the context of housing crisis, to viewing it as a phenomenon altogether separate from deep poverty.
There can be no doubt we do little to honor our history and cause if we allow our demands for housing justice to simply morph into line items in the federal budget. And clearly we do nothing to further our cause by allowing it to be hijacked by technocrats, political insiders, and “experts” who view homelessness as something that can be ended through “cost saving,” budget-cutting strategies that only pit one needy population against another.
Yet America is “the land of opportunity,” and there is no shortage of “advocates” and policymakers who have found the prevailing winds of lowered expectations and heightened rhetoric too intoxicating to pass on. Indeed, according to our unofficial homeless industry managers, it has become “irresponsible” to suggest a message of social justice or to push for real systemic change, particularly when so many are busy at work in our nation’s capital pursuing more “realistic” policies. If it weren’t so tragic and laden with terrible consequences, the prevailing wisdom in DC policy circles has all the absurdity to make for good theater.
Whatever else it may have represented, Housing Now was, at its core, a collective expression of basic human rights, and its broad-based support suggested that the issue was appropriately located within the concerns of a larger struggle. Today, 15 years later, national homelessness advocacy has largely devolved into an isolated niche market, unable to see past the next grant cycle or beyond the limitations of its own incremental road map.
Here’s another anniversary well worth celebrating: Oct. 4 is World Habitat Day. Every year since it was designated by the United Nations General Assembly in 1985, World Habitat Day has been celebrated on the first Monday in October. This day has been set aside for the world to reflect on the state of housing and the basic human right to adequate shelter, and to serve as a reminder of our collective responsibility. Across the globe, a number of events are planned, including ribbon-cutting ceremonies in Benin to dedicate new housing, press conferences in the Ivory Coast, and a debate broadcast on Radio Mozambique. Elsewhere, in Fiji, workshops will be held on the critical importance of social housing, and in India, through the National Forum for Housing Rights, groups are organizing a four-day campaign focused on forced evictions targeting the urban poor. In the United States, the National Policy and Advocacy Council on Homelessness (NPACH) will honor the day as part of the annual Florida Coalition for the Homeless conference, by hosting a forum on housing rights. Activities will include highlights of notable global anti-poverty efforts and a discussion of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), which includes a clearly defined right to housing under Article 11. As discussed in previous issues of Street Sheet, the United States has consistently refused to recognize any human right to housing and has, in fact, implemented policies that would be classified under the ICESCR as “retrogressive measures.” These include dramatically cutting Section 8 and other housing programs for the poor and instigating forced eviction and displacement resulting in homelessness.
According to the U.S. Interagency Council for the Homeless, 140 cities have now signed on to create Ten Year Plans to End [“Chronic”] Homelessness. The $70 million Samaritan Initiative, of course, forms the battering ram of this drive to add more cities to the mix. It’s worth considering that a 2003, $35 million precursor program to the Samaritan Initiative resulted in 11 urban areas receiving grants of roughly $3 million each to address a tiny fraction of the homeless population in their communities. If the Samaritan Act were to be authorized and funded by Congress, would a potential doubling of the money equally translate to 22 total grantees receiving assistance? Would the existing grantees see their share double? Or should all 140 cities now classified as pledged to the ICH policy drive expect a piece of the action under the Ten Year Plan bargain? Food for thought.
Brad