Boston Globe Article: France endorses housing as a legal right - Lobbyists push homelessness to forefront, By Kerstin Gehmlich, Reuters, January 4, 2007

Following weeks of protests by homeless advocates camped in red tents in Paris and other cities across France, French President Jacques Chirac used his 2007 New Year's address to proclaim France would pass a new law guaranteeing a legal right to housing. On February 22 the French Parliament passed the bill, which makes housing a right on par with education in French law and allows individuals to sue the state if they have no adequate place to live.

In sharp contrast to the U.S. welfare system, which gives housing assistance grudgingly and only to limited populations, the French law sets out that all legal residents who have inadequate resources to access or sustain adequate and independent housing have the right to a decent home. A person who has not been offered adequate accommodation has the right to sue the responsible authorities and possibly receive monetary compensation.

The law is to be phased in. Until December 1, 2008, five "priority" groups, including people who are homeless, families living in inadequate or overcrowded housing, people threatened with eviction and people living in insecure and unhealthy accommodation will able to take legal action to have their rights enforced by the state, or in some cases regional or local authorities. By 2012 the law will expand to include every person or family housed in unworthy or unsanitary conditions who, although eligible for social housing placement, has not received any offer within a reasonable period of time.

The new French law is similar to a 2003 Scottish law, which guaranteed a swift transition into temporary and then permanent housing for homeless individuals and families, beginning with the most needy, but then expanding to all. Most French homeless organizations are happy with the law. However, Benoitte Bureau of the French housing organization Droit au Logement (DAL) or "Right to Housing" says the benefits may not be coming:"The problem of the law is that it doesn't oblige the state to very much. We thought to write in the law that the right to housing would provoke something that was similar to what happened with school. The state at the end of the 19th century said school is obligatory for children. So after that law, in about ten years around twenty thousand schools were built. And the masters were recruited and trained. So we thought that a law on the right to housing should follow that principle. In fact the philosophy of the law is very different. The idea of the law is not to oblige the state to build affordable housing. The idea is just the opposite. To go from 3.5 million people who are homeless or ill housed - then by eliminating them, come to a small number of people which correspond to the number of existing housing. Which is just the opposite from a universal right. They're going to move from shelter to shelter or stay in the slums."

NLCHP will be following the development of this new law closely, and will make a translated version available as soon as possible for use as a potential model in the U.S. For more information, contact NLCHP's Human Rights Staff Attorney, Eric Tars, at etars@nlchp.org.

1 Sarah Elzas, _France's Homeless Campers_, 3/9/2007, at http://networkeurope.radio.cz/feature/frances-homelesscampers*&nbsp