Testimony of Maria Foscarinis, Esq.
Executive Director
National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty
Washington, D.C., U.S.A.
Before the
Inter-American Commission on Human Rights
Situation of the right to adequate housing in the Americas
Hearing---122^nd Period of Sessions
 
 
Thank you for the opportunity to testify.  My name is Maria Foscarinis, and I am an attorney and Executive Director of the National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty (NLCHP), a non-governmental organization in Washington, D.C.  Both my organization and I have written extensively on homelessness in the U.S. generally and on its human rights implications specifically.[1]
 
A recent report by NLCHP, submitted with this testimony, details the homelessness and housing crisis in the United States and its human right implications.  As Miloon Kothari, Special Rapporteur on Adequate Housing for the U.N. Commission on Human Rights, wrote in a preface to NLCHP's report: "The homelessness crisis in the United States, amply demonstrated in this report, is marked by a range of violations of internationally recognized human rights, including the human right to adequate housing."[2]
I.  Introduction: The U.S. is failing to ensure and respect the right to housing

The resources, public and private, devoted by the U.S. are not sufficient to ensure the right to housing for all Americans in the shortest amount of time, contrary to its obligations under the Charter and the Declaration.  Despite the enactment of the Housing Act of 1949, which declared as a primary goal to provide, "a decent home and a suitable living environment for every American family," the U.S. has not put in place measures to actually implement this goal and to meet its obligation; nor has it allocated public funding, nor required the allocation of private funding, sufficient to meet this obligation.  Instead, the U.S. has retreated from its commitment and cut the funding allocated to housing for the poor, and now proposes further cuts.  The growth and persistence of homelessness in the past two decades, and the inadequacy of the response to the needs of this most vulnerable population, are testament to these failures.  Further, the prevalence of inadequate housing, due to overcrowding or substandard physical conditions, particularly for low-income people, violates the right to adequate housing. The U.S. is also failing to respect the right to housing.  It is not protecting homeless people from arbitrary and discriminatory actions such as police sweeps and criminal punishment for their status. Moreover, recent federal policies, including the HOPE VI program, have required the destruction of existing public housing and forced the displacement of its residents without any guarantee of replacement housing.  Further, despite the enactment of civil rights laws, in practice racial discrimination in housing conditions and access is persistent and widespread.
 
II. Failure to ensure the right to housing
 
At least 840,000 people are homeless on any given day within the United States.  As large numbers of people transition in and out of homelessness, more than 3.5 million people are affected within a given year, 1.35 million of whom are children.  It is estimated that 12 million people - 6.5 percent of the population - will experience homelessness at some point in their lives.  A quarter of those homeless are children.  Families with children make up 37 percent of the homeless population.  According to a federal government survey, 44 percent of homeless people report that they work full- or part-time, yet cannot afford housing.
 

Many are unable to obtain access to emergency shelter, often being turned away by overburdened, inadequately funded providers.  According to a 2004 survey by the U.S. Conference of Mayors, of 27 large U.S. cities, 32% of requests by homeless families for emergency shelter were turned down in those cities that year.  In 56% of the cities surveyed, families may be required to separate in order to obtain shelter.  In addition, a review of homelessness in 50 cities found that in virtually every city, the city's official estimated number of homeless people greatly exceeded the number of emergency shelter and transitional housing spaces.[3]  For those homeless persons unable to obtain emergency shelter, the system's failure can be deadly, particularly during the winter.  It can also lead to criminal punishment, with homeless people in urban areas increasingly being targeted by municipal police forces for criminal offenses such as sleeping in public, "illegal lodging," or begging. 
The impact of homelessness is severe for all who experience it; perhaps most severe - and reprehensible - is the impact on children.  Homeless children are 50% more likely to die before their first birthday than housed poor children.[4]  Homeless children suffer almost twice the respiratory infections, five times the intestinal infections, seven times the iron deficiency, twice as many hospitalizations, and significantly worse health status compared to housed children.[5]  According to the U.S. Department of Education, some 12% are not enrolled in school.  And homeless children are likely to be separated from their parents to an astounding degree: in New York City in 1996, 60% of residents in shelters for single adults had children who were not with them; in Maryland, only 43% of parents living in shelters had children with them; and in Chicago, 54% of a combined street and shelter homeless sample were parents, but 91% did not have children with them (Shinn and Weitzman, 1996).[6]

While millions are affected by homelessness, even more are at risk because of the lack of affordable housing.  According the most recent report of the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard University, in 2001 some 95 million Americans had housing cost burdens (paying over 30% of their incomes for housing), lived in inadequate housing, or lived in overcrowded conditions.[7]  Some 14.3 million households, representing almost one in seven households, are severely burdened by the cost of housing, paying over 50% of their incomes for housing.  Wage levels, particularly for those working at minimum wage, coupled with rising costs are woefully insufficient to meet the rising costs of housing.[8] 
In fact, in no part of the country can a worker paid the minimum wage in his or her community[9] afford a two-bedroom apartment in that community, based on HUD's Fair Market Rent[10] for that community.[11]  Moreover, in only four communities in the U.S could a minimum wage worker afford a one-bedroom apartment.[12]  To be affordable, housing costs should consume no more than 30% of a household's income, according to the U.S. Department of Housing (HUD), the federal agency responsible for housing.  Applying this standard, in order to afford the median Fair Market Rent for a two-bedroom apartment, a worker would have to earn $15.37 per hour.[13] But the median hourly wage in the United States is only about $14.00, more than a quarter of the population earns less than $10.00 an hour, and the current federal minimum wage is $5.15 per hour. 
Disabled people whose sole source of income is federal disability benefits are virtually priced out of the private housing market.  In 1998, on a national average, a person receiving Supplemental Security Income (SSI) benefits had to spend 69% of his or her SSI monthly income to rent a one-bedroom apartment at Fair Market Rent; and in more than 125 housing market areas, the cost of a one-bedroom apartment at Fair Market Rent was more than a person's total monthly SSI income).[14]  Some 38 percent of elderly renters are paying more than 50% of their income for housing.[15] 
One in 50 American households live in seriously substandard housing.  Inadequate, overcrowded, unstable housing conditions severely affect children.[16]  A 1998 report issued jointly by physicians at Boston Medical Center and Housing America found that:  

• 21,000 children have stunted growth attributable to a lack of stable housing.
• 10,000 children between the ages of 4 and 9 are hospitalized for asthma attacks each year because substandard housing triggers attacks by exposing residents to irritating factors including smoke, cockroaches, dust mites, mold, rats and mice.
• Over 120,000 children suffer from anemia attributable to their families' inability to afford both rent and food.
• 187 children die each year in house fires attributable to faulty electrical heating and electrical equipment.  Such deaths are as much as nine times more common in poor communities.
• 14 million U.S. children younger than six years live in housing with lead paint, and one million suffer from lead poisoning. [17] 
  Federal legislation enacted in the aftermath of the Great Depression stated a goal of a "decent home" for "every American," and created a system of federal housing programs to implement this goal through directly or indirectly subsidizing the construction of housing affordable to the poor, or through granting subsidies to poor people themselves, who could then use them to obtain housing in the private market.  Currently, the major federal housing programs are public housing (housing developed by the federal government) and the section 8 and housing voucher programs (subsidies that low income people use to pay for housing in the private market).  
  However, this goal has remained merely aspirational: housing has not been recognized as a right in the United States, and government spending on housing for the poor is discretionary. (In contrast, indirect subsidies to more affluent Americans through the tax system are by right, through the mortgage interest deduction.)  Nor has the original goal been realized.  Currently, only 34% of the United States' 9.9 million households who are poor enough to be eligible for housing assistance actually receive it.  The gap is so great that many cities have stopped accepting applications for housing assistance programs because waiting lists have become so long.  According to the December 2004 27-city survey by the U.S. Conference of Mayors, 59% of the cities surveyed have stopped accepting applications because the wait is so long.  In the cities that do still accept applications, the average wait is:  20 months for public housing, 30 months for section 8 certificates, and 35 months for vouchers.  
  Moreover, U.S. policy decisions have led to an overall decrease in affordable housing units for the poor over the last three decades.[18]  The overall budget for housing for the poor has been reduced by some $46.82 billion dollars in real terms between 1976 and 2004.[19]  The impact of these funding cuts is severe: in 1976, the federal government funded over 435,362 additional units through rental subsidies.  In 1982, new rental subsidized housing commitments dropped to 60,590; in 1995, the number dropped to 33,491, and in 1996, and the number dropped to 8,493.  The number increased after 1996, but to nowhere near the level it was in the late 70s,[20] and it has since decreased.  For 2005, the number of new rental subsidized housing commitments is 0.

Currently, the HUD budget for low-income housing programs represents just 1.2% of the total federal budget.[21] 
Recent retroactive policy changes are putting housing authorities under even greater strain.  In April 2004, the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) announced that it will limit the amount of 2004 funding state and local housing agencies receive to August 2003 levels, adjusted only for inflation - not for escalating housing costs - marking a retroactive change from prior HUD policy.  As a result of this retroactive change, many state and local housing agencies have been thrown into a funding crisis.  Because of this change, an estimated 96,000 vouchers across the country will lose their funding - resulting in loss of housing for some 96,000 families. In dollar terms, the policy change has resulted in the retroactive loss of about $183 million.[22]  
The result of these federal funding cuts and policy changes are felt hardest by those in need as agencies attempt to adapt to this situation.  Some agencies, for example, are raising the rent burdens on low-income families by reducing the amount of rent that housing vouchers cover.  Other agencies are reducing the number of families assisted by rescinding housing vouchers already provided to families that are searching for housing but have not yet found suitable accommodation, and by stockpiling vouchers that become available when people leave housing programs.  Still others are affected so severely by the funding and policy changes that they have been given no choice but to terminate assistance to low-income families using the vouchers to help pay rent.[23] 
The Administration's proposed FY 2006 budget seeks further cuts to low-income housing programs.  Most dramatically, the Administration proposes to eliminate the Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) program and move those functions to the Department of Commerce without any assurance that housing would continue to be an eligible activity.  Moreover, total funding would be cut by almost $2 billion.  CDBG funds have been an important source of funding to build or rehabilitate affordable housing for low- and moderate-income persons, including homeless persons.  The President's budget also includes several cuts to other HUD programs, most notably the Section 811 program for persons with disabilities (cut by $118 million) and the Housing Assistance for Persons with AIDS program (cut by $18 million).  All together, the proposed cuts total at least $3 billion.
 

The Administration proposes a $200 million increase to shelter and housing for homeless people; however, these increases are dwarfed by proposed cuts in other programs.  Moreover, the larger cuts in overall funding for low-income housing put more people at risk of homelessness, defeating the purpose of the small additional assistance for homeless people.  Similarly, while the Administration proposes a small increase to the Section 8 program, this increase will only restore half of the vouchers cut last year.  Overall, the Administration's proposal for FY 2006 would reduce the HUD budget by 11.5%.  Further, the proposed budget does not include enough funding for future years; it is estimated that this will result in a 16% decrease over the next five years when adjusted for inflation.[24]  
The resources, public and private, devoted by the U.S. are not sufficient to ensure the right to housing for all Americans in the shortest amount of time, contrary to its obligations under the Charter and the Declaration.  Despite the enactment of the Housing Act of 1949, which declared as a primary goal to provide, "a decent home and a suitable living environment for every American family," the U.S. has not put in place measures to actually implement this goal and to meet its obligation; nor has it allocated public funding, nor required the allocation of private funding, sufficient to meet this obligation.  Instead, the U.S. has retreated from its commitment and cut the funding allocated to housing for the poor, and now proposes further cuts.  Moreover, the prevalence of inadequate housing, due to overcrowding or substandard physical conditions, particularly for low-income people, violates the right to adequate housing.
 
The growth and persistence of homelessness in the past two decades is testament to these failures.  Further, the inadequacy of the response to the immediate crisis needs of this most vulnerable population is in itself a violation.  Further, because rights are interdependent and because housing itself is a fundamental human need, the deprivation of a home leads to other deprivations---and violations of other rights.  For example:
 
-         The right to education: without a stable home, many children are denied access to school, or even when they are able to gain access, have no proper place to study
-         The right to health: homeless people have much higher incidences of both chronic and acute disease, physical and mental
-         The right to vote: without an address, homeless people are often denied the right to vote
-         The right to be free from discrimination: homeless people are penalized for their status, as described above. Moreover, homeless women, particularly those who have lost their homes while fleeing domestic violence, are discriminated against based on gender. 
 
III.  Failure to respect the right to housing
 
Criminal punishment and "sweeps" of homeless people
Recent years have seen a steep rise in the enactment and enforcement of criminal laws that punish homeless persons' use of public spaces. Usually enacted and enforced at the city level, these laws include prohibitions on sleeping in public, sitting, lying or "loitering" in public places, and begging.  Although typically phrased in neutral terms, these laws are generally aimed at removing homeless and other destitute people from public places such as sidewalks, parks, highways median strips, and bridge underpasses.  Often they address the concerns of businesses that the sight of impoverished people living and begging in public places will disturb or scare off potential customers.  In the aftermath of September 11, restrictions on public places have worsened as security has increased generally and added another type of rationale to imposing strict limitations on public place use.[25] 
As described above, over the past two decades homelessness has increased dramatically across the country. But resources to meet the need have been insufficient: as also documented below, there is not sufficient affordable housing to meet the needs of the poor and homelessness; nor is there sufficient shelter or transitional housing space to meet the immediate, emergency needs of homeless people.  In a 2002 report surveying over 50 major cities across the country, we found that:

-       In no city survey was there sufficient shelter space to meet the need, according to the cities' own estimates

-       Each city, without exception, had at least one law restricting public space use.

-       One third of the cities surveyed prohibited sitting or lying down in at least some parts of the city (usually in the down town business district)---often with exceptions for non-homeless public space users

-       16.3% of the cities survey prohibited public sleeping in all areas of the city

-       70% showed an increase from our 1999 survey in numbers of laws that "criminalize" homelessness 
These laws are often enforced in police "sweeps" of public areas, sometimes undertaken before a major public event such as a sporting event (including Olympics), convention, or political event. During sweeps, police remove homeless people, as well as any makeshift "dwellings' they have created and their belongings, without any provision for their relocation and typically without any notice.  They are either arrested or threatened with arrest and ordered to "move on;" their belongings are either confiscated or destroyed.  The following are just a few recent examples of such violations: 
-         In Arkansas, the Little Rock Police Department has been targeting homeless people by conducting sweeps that result in the destruction of homeless persons' personal property.  Further, homeless persons have been forced to move from public space to public space by police officers or face arrest, even when Little Rock has only 1475 shelter beds to accommodate the 3000 homeless Little Rock residents.

-     San Diego, California, has engaged in a campaign of targeting homeless persons through the issuance of citations and arrests for "illegal lodging," even though the Regional Task Force on Homelessness has estimated that the City has only 2,019 shelter beds for the 4,458 homeless San Diego residents.  -     After the City of Sarasota's anti-lodging law was deemed unconstitutional by a Florida court, the City continued to pursue ways to target homeless people by expanding and passing a revised version of the law to be able to continue to impose criminal penalties upon homeless persons sleeping outside, even when the City has a severe shortage of shelter beds.  According to City officials, there are approximately 1,264 homeless individuals in Sarasota County, but only 258 available shelter beds
 
Moreover, by imposing criminal sanctions on homeless persons for conducting activities such as sleeping or eating in public places - when there are no alternative private places, given the shortage of shelter and housing - they penalized them based on their status.  Some U.S. courts have held that under these circumstances such laws violate the U.S. Constitution, yet there has been no nationally applicable court decision to this effect and thus such practices continue without any reliable, effective judicial remedy.  In addition, when they remove homeless people from the public places that serve as their residence of last resort--with no notice, and no arrangement for any alternative place to reside-they interfere with their last vestiges of security of tenure, in violation of the right to housing.

Second, they discriminate based on property status, because they penalize homeless people based on their status as homeless, in violation of the right to be free from arbitrary and discriminatory punishment.  By allowing such laws to be enacted and implemented, the United States (including its state and city governments) has failed to respect the right to housing. 
Evictions from public housing
Cuts in federal housing programs have resulted in fewer units of affordable housing for the poor.  In addition, another major federal initiative, HOPE VI, is not only leading to the overall loss of affordable housing units, it is also requiring the eviction of poor tenants from existing housing.  The HOPE VI program is intended to benefit the current residents of severely distressed public housing residents by revitalizing and renovating units and surrounding communities.  The program is supposed to improve families' quality of life by moving them closer to jobs and better quality schools, which has occurred for some families.  However the HOPE VI program evicts tenants without any guarantee of replacement housing.  Moreover, in 1998, Congress removed the requirement that every affordable housing unit demolished under HOPE VI be replaced.  Fifteen percent of residents recently surveyed have worse housing conditions than they had before HOPE VI.    
Consequently, many families are being displaced and low-income housing units are being lost under the HOPE VI program.  As of September 2002, 78,259 public housing units were slated for demolition under the HOPE VI program, with only 33,853 new public housing rental units planned for replacement.  This results in a net loss of 44,406 public housing units.  In addition, public housing authorities plan to build 29,000 non-public housing, affordable units.  However, these new units built will not be affordable to all the displaced families.  Ms. Carol Steele, President of the Coalition to Protect Public Housing, in Chicago, will present testimony about the impact of this policy in her city. 

Racially segregated housing

Despite federal civil rights laws, vast disparities along racial and ethnic lines in housing access persist in the United States.  Black-white segregation for children under 18 increased by 3% in metropolitan areas in the last decade of the twentieth century, and increased nearly 5% in metropolitan areas that were already more than 10% black.[26]  Major racial disparities in homeownership rates persist in the US; minority groups have considerably lower home ownership rates than whites.  In 1995, rates in the U.S. were: 69.2% for whites, 43.6% for blacks, and 41.8% for householders of Hispanic origin. Disparities in housing conditions are quite dramatic.  Among owners, 3.8% of whites live in severely or moderately deficient housing, while the rate for blacks is 22.2% and for Hispanics, 13.0%.  Among renters, 7% of whites have severely or moderately deficient housing, compared to 24.4% of blacks and 17.6% of Hispanics. 
By failing to take steps to eliminate racial disparities in the enjoyment of the right to housing, the United States has failed to meet its obligations of equal protection and non-discrimination recognized in the Charter of the OAS[27] and the American Declaration on the Rights and Duties of Man.[28] The prohibition against discrimination imposes on the United States the duty not only to refrain from the practice of racial discrimination in its housing programs, but also to take positive measures to reverse and eliminate the consequences of past discrimination, as well as to protect its residents from the impacts of private discrimination.[29]  The obligation to eradicate racial segregation and to ensure the equal enjoyment of the right to housing is also recognized by the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (CERD).[30] 
IV. Conclusion
 
Thank you for the opportunity to present this testimony. We stand ready to assist the Commission in its work.

----[1] See, e.g., National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty, Homelessness in the United States and the Human Right to Housing (2004); Maria Foscarinis, et al., The Human Right to Housing, Making the Case in U.S. Advocacy, 38 Clearinghouse Review 97 (2004); Maria Foscarinis, Homelessness and Human Rights: Towards an Integrated Strategy, 19 St. Louis U. Public Law Review 317 (2000).
[2] National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty, Homelessness in the United States and the Human Right to Housing (2004).
[3] NLCHP and NCH, Illegal to be Homeless (1999).[4] Julia C. Torquati & Wendy C. Gamble, Social Resources and Psychosocial Adaptation
of Homeless School Aged Children, Journal of Social Distress and the Homeless, Vol. 10, No. 4, October 2001, p. 305.

[5] Doc4Kids, p. 14.
[6] National Coalition for the Homeless, NCH Fact Sheet #7:  Homeless Families with Children (June 2001), available at:  http://www.nationalhomeless.org/families.html.
[7] Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University, State of the Nation's Housing, 2004.[8] Furthermore, an estimated 650,000 people released from state and federal prisons each year face exclusions based on federal law in many federal housing programs.  See Bureau of Justice Statistics,  <http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/prisons.htm>; Nino Rodriguez and Brenner Brown, "Preventing Homelessness Among People Leaving Prison," Issues in Brief, December 2003 (Vera Institute of Justice, <http://www.vera.org/publication_pdf/209_407.pdf>).  15% to 27% of prisoners expect to go to homeless shelters upon release from prison.  Linda Ostreicher. "When Prisoners Come Home," Gotham Gazette, 1 January 2003, http://www.gothamgazette.com/article/socialservices/20030117/15/187>.  The Vera Institute also reports that at any given time in Los Angeles and San Francisco, 30% to 50% of all people under parole supervision are homeless, and in New York City, up to 20% of people released from city jails each year are homeless or their housing arrangements are unstable. 

[9] This takes into account the minimum wage in each community, which in some cases is higher than the current federal minimum of $5.15 per hour.
[10]Fair Market Rent is HUD's estimate of what a household seeking modest rental housing must expect to pay for rent and utilities in the local market.
[11] NLIHC, Out of Reach (2004).
[12]  Wayne, Crawford, and Lawrence counties in Illinois and Washington County, Florida.
[13] NLIHC, Out of Reach, 2004. (NLIHC calls this the "national "Housing Wage").
[14] National Coalition for the Homeless, NCH Fact Sheet #15:  Homelessness Among Elderly Persons  (June 1999), available at:  http://www.nationalhomeless.org/elderly.html; Technical Assistance Collaborative & the Consortium for Citizens with Disabilities Housing Task Force, 1999.
[15] JCHSHU 2004.
[16] Joint Center on Housing Studies of Harvard University, 2004.
[17] Doc4Kids, p. 8.
[18] There have been periods over the last three decades where the number of federally subsidized housing units started to climb again, but overall the trend is downward.
[19] NLIHC, Changing Priorities, Oct. 2004.
[20] NLIHC Changing Priorities," a look at HUD between 1976-2007 <http://www.nlihc.org/pubs/changingpriorities.pdf.
[21] Most but not all of the HUD budget is for low-income housing.   A portion is for moderate-income housing or for infrastructure development.
[22] Sard and Fischer, Further Action by HUD Needed to Halt Cuts in Housing Assistance for Low-Income Families, p. 2-3 Center On Budget and Policy Priorities (July 15, 2004).
[23] Sard and Fischer, p.1.
[24] Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, 2005.
[25] NLCHP, Photo Identification Barriers Faced by Homeless Persons: The Impact of September 11 (2004).
[26] Michael O. Emerson et al., Does Race Matter in Residential Segregation?  Exploring the Preferences of White Americans, American Sociological Review, Vol. 66, No. 6 (Dec. 2001) 922---935, 932.
[27] Charter of the Organization of American States art. 3(1), 45(a).
[28] American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man, adopted 1948, Ninth International Conference of American States, Art. II, O.A.S. Res. XXX, reprinted in Basic Documents Pertaining to Human Rights in the Inter-American System, at 17, OEA/Ser.L./V.II.82, doc. 6 rev. 1 (1992).
[29] See id. at paras. 103-04: "In compliance with this obligation, States must abstain from carrying out any action that, in any way, directly or indirectly, is aimed at creating situations of de jure or de facto discrimination.... In addition, States are obliged to take affirmative action to reverse or change discriminatory situations that exist in their societies to the detriment of a specific group of persons." See also Inter-Am. Comm. H.R., report on the Situation of Human Rights in Ecuador 1996, at vii, OEA/Ser.L/V/II.96 Doc. 10 rev. 1 (1997): "Where a...group has historically been subjected to forms of public or private discrimination, the existence of legislative prescriptions may not provide a sufficient mechanism for ensuring the right of all inhabitants to equality within society.  Ensuring the right to equal protection of and before the law may require the adoption of positive measures, for example, to ensure nondiscriminatory treatment in education and employment, to remedy and protect against public and private discrimination."
[30] International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, art. 3, 5(e)(iii), 660 U.N.T.S. 195, reprinted in 5 I.L.M. 352 (1966).