It is extremely disappointing that Congress has chosen to pass deep cuts to crucial federal low-income housing programs (-3.8 billion).  Yet, perhaps the biggest letdown is, at the same time, the increase in funding for problematic programs that demolish and ultimately lead to the privatization of permanently affordable housing.  One of these programs, the Rental Assistance Demonstration (RAD), was strongly and clearly opposed by many residents, resident groups, advocates, key legislators, and many experts in such fields as urban planning.  Despite this heavy opposition, language authorizing RAD was pushed through, not the general legislative process, but an appropriations bill, in a truly atypical move by Congress.  The Choice Neighborhoods Initiative (CNI), as well, has been widely opposed by those neighborhoods most directly impacted and yet, it too, received unprecedented funding.

The “minibus” appropriations bill passed on November 17th, which determines the 2012 budget for federal housing programs, demonstrates Congress’ continued determination to build an economic recovery on the backs of the poor and abdicate its responsibility to care for society’s most vulnerable.  Lawmakers cut funding levels for almost all federal housing programs, living up to advocates’ fears that efforts to curb the federal deficit would result in further destruction of this country’s social safety net.  These cuts are even more significant when viewed as part of a decades-long disintegration of federal public housing, which has received no money for new units and lost 290,588 units since 1995 as a result of flawed policy proposals.

As for the new RAD program authorized within the appropriations bill, lawmakers claim that it “is intended to test a model to preserve public housing,” by allowing public housing properties to convert to Section 8 assisted rental properties, in order to give them increased access to private funding.  In actuality, however, public housing converted to a project-based system will create a complex web of individual owners and private capital investors, resulting in a conflict between profit-driven interests and the basic need for affordable basic and decent housing, likely both decreasing the stock of affordable housing and increasing its costs.

Much like RAD at its core, CNI is a continuation of HUD’s HOPE VI program to “transform” public housing blocks into “mixed-income” neighborhoods, which has proven to lead to large-scale family displacement and the loss of tens of thousands of permanently affordable housing units, particularly in “hot real estate markets.”  Both of these programs are the next steps of a cycle wherein Congress cuts funding for housing programs, leading to deterioration of the nation’s public housing stock, and then uses that deterioration to justify demolition-based programs that lead to an overall loss in the number of units available to fulfill the crucial housing needs of low-income Americans.

CNI and RAD, like the previous iterations of RAD – Transforming Rental Assistance (a.k.a. PETRA) under the Obama Administration and, under the Bush Administration, the Public Housing Reinvestment Initiative – and HOPE VI, are all part of this disturbing trend in which basic housing rights have been progressively abandoned, despite growing housing needs.  Another trend that these programs represent is HUD’s failure to engage in a meaningful participatory process with residents of public and subsidized housing to ensure that new policies reflect the needs and interests of those positioned to be most impacted.  HUD has instead engaged in a process of “non-sultation” – a specious public consultation on decisions that have already been made.

Perhaps more distressing than the government’s promotion of these disastrous programs is the endorsement of groups who claim to represent the interests of low-income residents.  National advocacy groups like the National Low-Income Housing Coalition and PolicyLink advocated for the passage of RAD and a continued commitment to CNI, despite the long-term danger that these programs pose for the availability of permanently affordable housing in many communities across the United States.  These groups, like Congress and the Administration, have failed to prioritize the needs of the lowest-income residents and the fight for policies that would actually preserve and increase affordable housing options in the United States, and have instead endorsed a policy of privileging profit margins over people.  The failure of these policy groups to act as genuine advocates on behalf of residents makes the necessity of meaningful resident participation in the lawmaking process all the more evident.

Housing is a basic need and a human right, and it is both a moral obligation and sound social policy to ensure that the housing needs of all are met.  Congress, the Administration, and HUD must work to ensure that future federal housing proposals include residents’ rights to participate in decision-making, expand accessibility and accountability, and safeguard public ownership and true affordability.  Groups that purport to advocate for housing justice must keep these goals in mind as well and hold the government to its obligations, rather than rubber-stamping policies that continue to favor large real estate interests over the needs of low-income residents.

Chicago News Cooperative, Don Terry, Dec. 1, 2011

Even if the winds of winter blow the Occupy Chicago protesters and percussionists off the corner of LaSalle Street and Jackson Boulevard, civil disobedience is not going into hibernation.

A coalition of community organizations, including Occupy Chicago and Occupy the Hood Chicago have been holding training sessions in recent days to prepare for a “homes for the holiday” campaign to find housing for poor women and children.

The groups plan to break into and rehab vacant bank-owned foreclosed homes throughout the city and hand them over to homeless families in a series of news conferences and “house warming’’ events on Dec. 6.

“Since this is the holiday season, we’re trying to get the banks into the spirit of giving,’’ said Willie J.R. Fleming, co-founder of the Chicago Anti-Eviction Campaign, as he conducted a training session for more than 60 people last Saturday afternoon on the South Side. “We want to hit the banks with jabs and upper cuts and everything imaginable.’’

Other groups plan to clean and board up abandoned buildings and send the banks a bill for the labor and materials. Protesters also are preparing to mount non-violent “eviction defenses’’ – standing in the way of sheriff’s deputies as they try to carry out evictions.

“During the civil rights movement they did sit-ins,’’ Fleming said. “We’re doing live-ins.’’

The “homes for the holiday” campaign is part of a coordinated nationwide effort, largely organized by Occupy Wall Street, Occupy the Hood and Take Back the Land, a Washington D.C.-based organization that since its early days in Miami in 2006 has been at the forefront of the movement to seize bank-owned foreclosed homes and move in the homeless. Demonstrators are scheduled to commit similar acts of non-violent civil disobedience on Dec. 6 in Atlanta, Boston, Miami, New York and several other cities, which organizers hope will serve as a dress rehearsal for larger actions in the spring. Organizers say they plan a series of demonstrations, marches and eviction protests across the country starting in March and focusing on the issues of foreclosures, corporate excess and economic inequality.

“It is a first step in a very long upward battle,’’ said Evelyn DeHais, a member of the Occupy Chicago press committee. “We’re going to put out a call to action to as many people as we can. The idea is to inspire this kind of action throughout the winter and beyond.’’

The Cook County Sheriff’s Department is responsible for conducting evictions. Frank Bilecki, a spokesman for Sheriff Tom Dart, said that no one in the sheriff’s foreclosure and eviction unit had heard about the events planned for Dec. 6 until contacted by the Chicago News Cooperative this week.

“All of our eviction teams will be aware of it now,’’ Bilecki said. “We have to make sure we’re ready for it.’’

The Chicago Anti-Eviction Campaign training session on Saturday included tips on “how to canvas, how to talk with neighbors/community to get them to support and get involved in defense when necessary, how to identify properties and assess damage, how to support homeowners going through foreclosures, how to take back the land and Occupy Everything,’’ according to its website.

Max Rameau, founder of Take Back the Land, spent Monday and Tuesday in Chicago conducting training sessions before traveling to Miami to do more. At a storefront art gallery in Bridgeport Monday night, he told a largely white crowd of more than 60 Occupy Chicago supporters that the goal of the movement was to “cost the banks money’,’ but more importantly “to start a community conversation about housing as a human right.’’

“What we are doing is illegal,’’ Rameau said. “We are intentionally breaking the law. We’re saying the law is crap and we want to break it.’’

He said Take Back the Land targets only bank or government-foreclosed homes and only after searching property records and canvassing neighbors to rally support. He said the shortest time a family has lived in “a liberated’’ property was two weeks in Madison, Wis. “We made a tactical mistake of moving a black family into an all-white neighborhood,’’ Rameau said. The longest amount of time has been almost three years and counting, he said.

Last June, the Chicago Anti-Eviction Campaign moved a homeless woman and her four children, who were living in their van, into a foreclosed, vacant two-flat on the South Side. They are still there.

In an interview, Rameau said the Dec. 6 campaign was organized because “occupiers were starting to begin to think about what is going to happen in the winter and some people realized it didn’t make the most sense to just fight to try stay in these outdoor spaces.’’

The housing campaign, he added, was also a way to make the months of occupation and protest “more relevant to people of color.’’

“You don’t just defend a park,’’ Rameau said. “You defend people’s homes. That’s what’s relevant.’’

In preparation for the Dec. 6 event, Communities United Against Foreclosures and Evictions moved two sisters and their six children into a vacant bank-owned house in the Belmont Cragin neighborhood on the Northwest Side. The group also plans to move a family into a vacant house in Rogers Park as part of the campaign.

Another group, SOUL – Southsiders Organized for Unity and Liberation– is planning to seize a vacant bank-owned house and move in a homeless family in mid-December. After that, the group hopes to do it again and again.

“We need to raise the stakes,’’ said SOUL’s Byron Hobbs. “We’re looking at sustained occupation of several properties on the South Side.’’

The South Austin Coalition on the West Side has located a vacant house to take over on Dec. 6 but it must be rehabbed before a family can move in, said Elce Redmond, an organizer. He said the group also will clean and board up an abandoned house frequented by drug addicts and prostitutes down the street from an elementary school.

“We’re going to send the bill to the bank,’’ he said.

Reflections with the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Adequate Housing on More Than a Roof’s Launch, Crackdowns on Dissent & the Struggle to Be Heard in Vermont

On October 21st, 2011, NESRI attended the side event of the 66th United Nations General Assembly on the Right to Adequate Housing. The event was hosted by the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Adequate Housing, Ms. Raquel Rolnik, who presented a report on The Right to Adequate Housing in Disaster Relief and Recovery.

It was the perfect occasion for us to update the UN Special Rapporteur about the continued struggles for basic and decent housing in the United States since her official mission in 2009.

The Director of NESRI’s Human Right to Healthcare Program, on behalf of the Vermont Workers Center, shared with Ms. Rolnik stories of the struggle of Vermont’s displaced mobile home residents in the aftermath of Tropical Storm Irene. With homes destroyed by flooding, many of the residents are facing homelessness.  Residents are now organizing and fighting for a voice in the rebuilding process.  While Ms. Rolnik shared her report on the Right to Adequate Housing in Post-Disaster Settings to the General Assembly, NESRI was able to pass along the human rights-based demands of the residents organizing under the name Mobile Home Park Residents for Equality and Fairness.  The recommendations in Ms. Rolnik’s report reflect many of the concerns and demands of the community and Ms. Rolnik asked NESRI to be pass along more details.

NESRI also spoke with Ms. Rolnik about the “crackdown on dissent” of which we have been receiving increasing reports – that is, a pattern of criminalization targeting highly visible human rights defenders.  We shared with her the case of Los Angeles Community Action Network (LA CAN) organizer, Mr. Steve Richardson, who has been booked, processed and jailed four times for a single non-violent act of protest over the past 16 months alone.  Mr. Richardson is well-known throughout the community, the LAPD and to elected officials alike for his leadership in promoting civil and human rights in the Skid Row community of quickly gentrifying downtown Los Angeles.  Ms. Rolnik remembered fondly the tour of Skid Row Mr. Richardson led during her 2009 U.S. mission, stating that it was a “privilege” and highlighted Mr. Richardson’s clear commitment to the issues of homeless people in Skid Row and leadership within the community.

Lastly, Ms. Rolnik spoke highly of More Than A Roof, the grassroots documentary that follows her throughout her official fact finding mission to the United States two years ago.  It was one of Ms Rolnik’s first missions as a UN Special Rapporteur and one of her most poignant visits, she said. With regards to the film, she remarked, “It shows that in America, the capital of the world, there are people suffering from the lack of the right to adequate housing, and it also shows how important community organizing is and how important it is for the community to understand and to stand up and fight for their housing rights.”  More Than a Roof is “more than a documentary, it’s an example of how a mission on housing rights can be organized and meaningful when organized with human rights groups,” Ms. Rolnik said.

 

 

 

National civil and human rights organizations with a long collective history of defending the right of political expression and challenging the targeting of movement leaders submitted the following appeal letter to the Los Angeles City Attorney on behalf of Mr. Steve Richardson, a community organizer with the LA Community Action Network (LA CAN) based in the Skid Row community of downtown LA.

October 24th, 2011

Mr. Carmen A. Trutanich
Los Angeles City Attorney’s Office
200 North Main Street, 8th Floor
Los Angeles, CA 90012

Re: National alarm regarding your office’s prosecution of human rights defenders

Dear Mr. Trutanich:

As national organizations dedicated to advancing and protecting the rights guaranteed by the United States Constitution and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, we are deeply dismayed to learn of your office’s ongoing pattern of severely prosecuting grassroots activists for acts of non-violent protest.

The signatories of this letter represent a collective breadth and depth of experience supporting the work of civil and human rights defenders over the course decades of political movements. Many of us have a long history of defending the right of members of civil and human rights movements to political expression and challenging the targeting of these movements’ leaders.

Today, we write this letter to express our sincerest concerns regarding your office’s apparent policy regarding non-violent political protests, as made particularly evident in the case of Mr. Steve “General Dogon” Richardson. As you likely know, Mr. Richardson is a prominent community organizer with the Los Angeles Community Action Network (LA CAN) who, over the past 16 months, has been booked, processed and jailed four times on the same troubling charges arising out of one non-violent act of protest. Your office has doggedly pursued this individual case and has mischaracterized Mr. Richardson on several occasions in your advocacy for greater punishment.

The following facts lead us to believe that the prosecution of Mr. Richardson is, in fact, a political attack on Mr. Richardson and LA CAN. On May 21, 2010, Mr. Richardson was arrested after a City Council meeting at which the important issue of a rent increase freeze was to be voted on by the Council. Though all charges were initially dropped, they were later re-filed against Mr. Richardson after he had, as a protest for the violence he was subject to on May 21, publicly rejected a violence prevention certificate awarded to him by the city. Mr. Richardson was the only protester targeted for prosecution, although there were dozens of others involved in the non-violent protest.

We understand that Mr. Richardson’s case is not an anomaly, but one example of a pattern of acts by your office and the LAPD that appear intent on silencing the grassroots movement swelling throughout the city of Los Angeles. We believe LA CAN and Mr. Richardson, in particular, have been made targets because of the highly visible advocacy work the organization is doing in the Skid Row community of downtown Los Angeles. LA CAN and its over 900 low-income members have been successfully organizing and campaigning to increase housing rights and prevent civil and human rights violations by the police as a consequence of the LAPD’s over-saturation in the community under the Safer Cities Initiative. Specifically, Mr. Richardson is known as a leader in this work by both face and name to other organizers, community members, and elected and appointed officials. Because of his leadership and notoriety, criminalizing Mr. Richardson is not only troubling for its impact on him and LA CAN, but for the message it sends to other existing and potential advocates for civil and human rights throughout the city of Los Angeles, with its apparent intent to quell future protest.

The arrest of peaceful demonstrators, such as Mr. Richardson, is a violation of core constitutional rights. The right to dissent, for activists and citizens to protest government practices, is a right our nation’s founders recognized as one of the most fundamental and necessary liberties for a democratic society. This letter is sent to vindicate the rights of our colleagues Mr. Richardson, LA CAN, and others throughout the city to assemble and speak their mind free from the fear that they will be punished for their views. We hope this letter will help convince you and other representatives of the city of Los Angeles to stop violating people’s rights as a matter of policy and stop using taxpayers’ money to wage unconstitutional and unjust political attacks against members of the grassroots community.

Sincerely,

American Civil Liberties Union – Southern California
Center for Constitutional Rights
International Alliance of Inhabitants
National Economic and Social Rights Initiative
National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty
USA-Canada Alliance of Inhabitants
U.S. Human Rights Network