Shortage of housing for the poor grows

Originally posted on The Baltimore Sun

By Natalie Sherman, The Baltimore Sun
nsherman@baltsun.com

6:07 PM EST, March 8, 2014

It’s growing increasingly difficult for the poorest families in Baltimore to find affordable rental housing, and some housing advocates worry new housing policies such as privatization could make the problem worse.

An analysis by the Urban Institute found a yawning gap between the number of low-income renter households and affordable units available in every jurisdiction in the country.

In Baltimore City in 2012, there were 43 affordable units available per 100 extremely low-income households, down from 58 in 2000, according to the study published last week. The number dropped to 16 in Howard County in 2012 from 38 a dozen years earlier.

The forces behind the widening gap vary. Many experts say the gap comes down to money: The private market rarely builds or rehabilitates units for the poorest families, cities and states can’t afford it, and federal spending hasn’t kept pace.

“You can only house the really low-income with a significant cash subsidy, and the question is: Where is that money going to come from?” said Robert Embry, a former Baltimore housing commissioner who is now president of the Abell Foundation.”Housing was only provided when the federal government made money available, and the federal government is reducing its role in this area.”

The Urban Institute’s report came out the same week the Housing Authority of Baltimore City disclosed a plan to sell 22 of its high-rises — nearly 40 percent of the city’s stock of public housing — to developers that would modernize the facilities. The plan raised concerns that that might further reduce the availability of public housing among some advocates.

The Washington-based think tank’s report defined extremely low-income as households earning less than 30 percent of an area’s median income — meaning less than $25,700 a year for a family of four in 2012 throughout the Baltimore area. Affordability is measured as housing that costs less than a third of a household’s income.

The number of such families rose by as much as 10 percent in Carroll County and 60 percent in Baltimore County during the 12-year period, according to the analysis. Meanwhile, the supply of affordable units in the counties fell drastically, driven in part by surging demand for rentals at all income levels.

In Baltimore City, the number of these low-income families increased just 2 percent, but the affordable rental supply fell by about 24 percent, with much of that drop occurring before 2006, the Urban Institute found.

The study’s count of available units does not include what are considered substandard units or affordable apartments occupied by higher-income households.

For the families that do rent affordable units, federal programs are critical: Nationwide, 97 percent of the 3.26 million affordable units available to extremely low-income renters receive federal assistance, the institute estimated. Local waiting lists for some housing voucher programs are thousands of people long — 25,000 households in Baltimore County alone.

But since the 1980s, federal housing policy has shifted from deep subsidies to supporting private developers with tax credits and public financing in exchange for rent limits on some of their apartments. That has limited funds for public housing and Section 8 vouchers that guarantee rent does not exceed 30 percent of a qualified family’s income.

The new programs allow landlords to rent subsidized units to families with a wider range of incomes, still below an area median income. The looser requirements assure broader access to affordable housing and help avoid concentrations of poverty, policymakers said.

“There are people at different income levels that need assistance, and we try to make sure that we’ve got integrated housing opportunities,” said Patricia Rynn Sylvester, director of multifamily housing for the state’s Department of Housing and Community Development.

The policy changes have left out the poorest families, said Trudy McFall, chairman of Annapolis-based nonprofit Homes for America and president of the Maryland Affordable Housing Coalition

“It’s good to have housing that’s more of a mix of incomes,” she said. “The problem is we’re not beginning to replace very low-income units with these new programs.”

The state provides incentives for developers competing for the tax credits to reserve more units for the poorest families and has partnered with the Weinberg Foundation to devote some funds to units for families at 15 percent or less of area median income, Sylvester said.

Across the country, housing officials are moving to sell public housing units to private developers, just as Baltimore said it would do last week. Proponents say it will raise millions needed to renovate the properties, in part by allowing the public units to access the tax credit financing.

The city’s federal funds for public housing capital projects have fallenfrom $30 million in 1997 to $12.8 million this year, said Housing Commissioner Paul Graziano.

In addition to Baltimore’s plan, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development documents show privatization projects from housing authorities across the state, including applications from Anne Arundel and Howard counties.

Some housing advocates said they worry private ownership will exacerbate the shortage for the poorest families, allowing developers to reduce the number of units overall or steer housing toward families further up the income ladder.

“I can’t really speak definitively about that, but one would always be concerned,” said Jeff Singer, former CEO of Health Care for the Homeless who teaches at the University of Maryland School of Social Work. “It’s a little difficult to know precisely, because I am operating with a lack of information from the Housing Authority. They’ve been so secretive about the process that I don’t know what sort of contracts they’ll be signing with project developers and how they will limit the ability to rent to higher incomes.”

The average income of families in Baltimore public housing is about $12,000 a year, according to the Housing Authority.

Spokeswoman Cheron Porter said officials do not expect the makeup of tenants to change with privatization. The authority’s income-limit calculations will remain the same, and privatized units will go to households on its waiting list, currently 28,000 families long, she said.

The units will operate like so-called “project-based” Section 8 vouchers, she said.

“With a poverty rate at or above 25 percent for the city of Baltimore and our ongoing history of serving the most vulnerable population, we would not expect [income composition] to change,” she said.

McFall, whose Homes for America is one of the nonprofits participating in Baltimore’s privatization program, said it could preserve the number of housing units for the poorest families depending on how local authorities implement the program.

Moreover, she said, privatization will mean more units for the poorest families could access a state-administered pool of subsidized financing.

Gov. Martin O’Malley’s new budget seeks $24 million for the Rental Housing Works program, which provides state financing for private affordable housing projects. If funded at that level, $6 million will be reserved for the converted public housing units, according to the state.

“However this budget comes out, we will be using more of the federal and state resources that have tended to go to moderate incomes, and more of them will go to preserve, maintain or rebuild housing that serves people who get a deep subsidy,” McFall said.

But, she said, that doesn’t mean she is optimistic about the affordable-housing shortage.

“It’s creating better housing, and it might create more moderate income housing, but it isn’t creating new housing units for [families] at 30 percent or below,” she said. “And therein is why our shortage grows and grows.”

Home Matters™ Launch Is Today!

Today, in Washington, DC, National NeighborWorks® Association joined (NNA) with a coast-to-coast coalition to launch a unique national movement called Home Matters. Home Matters™ aims to build public support for the essential role that Home plays as the bedrock for thriving lives, families, and a stronger nation. As it expands, Home Matters™ will go beyond housing and illuminate the connections between stable housing and other important facets of American life such as:

• Individual Success: Home recharges adults and children alike for the day ahead.
• Education: Children in stable homes learn and achieve more in school.
• Health: Healthy habits take root more easily in stable affordable homes.
• Public Safety: Stable homes make communities safer.
• A Strong Economy: By having a Home that is affordable, people of all income levels have more to spend and support the economy.

Participating in the two-day launch, today and tomorrow, are leaders of more than 150 local and regional housing and community development organizations from across the nation – many of them NNA members – as well as national entities including NNA, Citi Community Development and Wells Fargo. Members of the U.S. Senate and U.S. House of Representatives will join us this evening, and U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Shaun Donovan will speak with the coalition tomorrow. Please visit the Home Matters™ website (www.HomeMattersAmerica.com), share your insights, tell your colleagues and friends about the movement, and connect to it through Facebook and Twitter. It’s time for the crucial roles that Home plays to be more broadly understood.

Affordable Rental Housing A.C.T.I.O.N.

And we’re back: we will resume our regular weekly posting shortly.

In the mean time, we encourage readers to take a look at the website of Affordable Rental Housing A.C.T.I.O.N., an advocacy organization whose stated purpose is pasted below.  The website of A.C.T.I.O.N.–an acronym for A Call to Invest In Our Neighborhoods–contains several of excellent resources and news updates.

Affordable Rental Housing A.C.T.I.O.N. (A Call To Invest in Our Neighborhoods) is a grassroots campaign led by a broad, cross-industry coalition of over 290 national, state, and local organizations.

Through Housing Credit advocacy and education, the A.C.T.I.O.N. campaign focuses on ensuring that low-income working  families  throughout the nation have access to decent, safe, affordable rental housing.

As the 112^th Congress considers tax reform and deficit reduction solutions, the campaign has reconvened to revise its strategy in light of the changed political and fiscal environment.  Moving forward, A.C.T.I.O.N. will focus on both protecting and preserving the Housing Credit in whatever deficit reduction or tax reform plan Congress considers, and enacting national consensus proposals to sustain the program’s  effectiveness and efficiency in solving the nation’s affordable rental housing challenges.

Harvard Study: Housing Slump is Severe, but Outlook May be Optimistic?

Harvard’s Famous Business School

Let me rephrase: the outlook isn’t optimistic, per se, but rather, it may be more optimistic than what we may be thinking or than what our worst nightmares suggest.  That’s about what I can discern from the new study by the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard, “The State of the Nation’s Housing.” Evidently, the study does not aim to be conclusive.  Rather, it compiles a broad array of metrics and empirically gathered data that address America’s housing crisis.

The study is significant on at least two fronts: for starters, it provides much needed in-depth data concerning widely observed phenomena in the housing market, such as a the “rental rebound,” or the rapid rise in demand for rental properties as a result of buyers’ shift towards a preference for renting, which strongly contrasts with consumer behavior from the early part of the decade.  The study also presents detailed figures on the affordability problem for would-be buyers as well as graphs depicting the unfortunate acceleration in vacant properties nationwide.

Beyond these trends, which housing experts had widely discovered before the study’s publication, the study also succeeds in extrapolating upon less examined factors and less obvious residual effects of the housing crisis.  For instance, the authors look at the ways in which demographic trends have exacerbated the housing crisis, a theme that is not often considered in housing discussions.

Here, the authors point out the severe deficit in buying from the generation they deem as “echo boomers,” or those Americans born in the year 1986 and afterward.  (This would put the oldest echo boomer at twenty-five).  Apparently, while this generation is “entering their peak household formation years,” household growth plummeted among this group in the second part of the last decade.  (As an echo boomer myself, I can think of only one peer of mine who owns a mortgage).  The authors, while pointing out that the huge influx of young adults will likely harm the housing market further, also speculate that the effect will be more pronounced when coupled with the retirement of the baby boomers, who will no longer contribute to the market.

The authors also provide a handy graph demonstrating the strong effect that the expiration of the first-time homebuyer tax credit had on the market (see the graph below).  According to the authors, once the timeframe for the tax credit lapsed, many “would-be homeowners were locked out at the top of the market.  And were then scared away as both home prices and employment plummeted.  The question now is whether, without the incentive provided by tax credits, first-timers will have the will to buy.”  Other topics examined include the rising utilities costs for low-income tenants, the decreasing supply of low-income housing, and the financing habits of homeowners from various income groups, to name just a few,

However, the tone of the study’s conclusory “Outlook” section contrasts sharply with virtually all of the previous data presented.  The authors state, “while still under the shadow of the foreclosure crisis, the housing market may be starting—however slowly—to turn the corner.”  They then introduces merely a single statistic to back this bold and frankly bizarre contention: that the amount of loans at least ninety days delinquent but not in foreclosure are falling.  Are you convinced?

While I can’t possibly summarize everything in this detailed analysis, I would encourage readers to the take a look at the study here.

Take Back the Land: A Human Rights Approach to Housing

Image Source: Take Back the Land

This week, we take a divergence from the dense, policy-based reporting of the last several posts to focus on a small, little known social movement, the Take Back the Land Movement.  Take Back the Land, an intentionally designed social movement that emerged via the work of diligent community organizers, possesses one central theme: to elevate the issue of Housing as a Human Right.

On it’s face, it’s easy to conflate the Miami-based organization with the countless other housing non-profits throughout the country, whose work is often challenged by bureaucracy and whose funding is likewise handcuffed by strictly regulated government grants.  But Take Back the Land is different.  It’s a grass roots movement that advocates on behalf of the homeless, with the goal of housing longtime homeless individuals and families as well as folks who’ve been displaced during the foreclosure crisis.  And unlike the stereotypical “social movement,” which often encounter criticism for being “too much talk, not enough action,” Take Back the Land has succeeded in finding houses for displaced individuals through a creative yet simplistic technique: moving people into foreclosed properties.

It’s easy to wonder how this is accomplishable and why the movement is yet to come across serious issues with law enforcement. In an ABC News segment, Max Rameau, a spokesperson for the movement, offers a good reason: “this [foreclosed house] is a complete waste.  This is not benefitting anyone.  It’s not benefitting the bank, it’s not benefitting the community, it’s not benefiting the families.  There’s no reason this house is empty.” (Rameau also wrote a book about developing a homeless village in an effort to provide affordable housing for low-income people, “Take Back the Land: Land, Gentrification and the Umoja Village Shantytown”).   Furthermore, rather than face trouble with the law, the movement, at least in Miami, is gaining the police’s support.  ABC spoke with the city’s Chief of Police, who expressed a refusal to enforce eviction notices, stating, “what Social Good would be served by arresting this mother, taking her away from her children?”

The movement has gained traction in several parts of the country, and while it’s not officially a non-profit, it’s website indicates that it has networked with “Local Action Groups” in cities coast to coast, ranging from Atlanta to Madison to Portland to Rochester.  While not a policy-promoting organization, Take Back the Land’s approach mirrors a policy alternative discussed both in our blog as well as at Mayor Rawlings-Blake’s recent Vacant’s to Values summit, Code Enforcement.

The theory behind Code Enforcement involves heavily cracking down on delinquent property owners to ensure that they meet the city’s code; if they do not, the government, in one step, can turn the property back to the market, where it will be sold in a competitive auction.  The idea behind the notion is that it would give property owners a strong incentive to maintain their homes while redirecting properties to a better owner if they do not.  Similarly, by putting families back into vacant homes, Take Back the Land helps ensure that the homes are once again properly maintained and meeting code, keeping neighborhood property values up and benefitting the broader community.  Their residents pay utilities, giving added business to companies that provide these services.

There are thousands of foreclosed properties in Baltimore and millions in the nation, the effect of which, in addition to harming families, encumber neighborhoods and by extension, capital markets and economies.  Rather than high-minded policies, Take Back the Land provides a plainspoken way to mitigate this crisis, and rather than sitting back and spouting out ideas, they are acting. By doing so, they begin to make progress towards their stated objectives of encouraging the perception of housing as a human right, local control over housing, community-based leadership, and direct action campaigns.  To be sure, plenty of their operations are illegal. However, policymakers and activists alike can benefit from the organization’s can-do spirit and human rights oriented strategy.

Remembering Dr. King, One of America’s First Equal Opportunity Housing Advocates

By Harsha Sekar

Martin Luther King Marching in Chicago

Source: Flickr

Last week, many Americans reflected on the legacy of one of our nation’s most revered heroes, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.   Dr. King’s holiday carried a special resonance this year in light of the recent tragedy in Tuscon, Arizona.  In the past week, luminaries ranging from New York Senator Charles Schumer to the Revered Al Sharpton invoked Dr. King’s message in an effort to comment on the shootings, as the latter even held a special King Day Forum, focusing on the ugly prevalence of gun violence.

At the annual King Day event held in Brooklyn, many of the speakers made the same juxtaposition, calling for an end to gun violence in honor of Dr. King’s legacy.  The New York Times noted that all of the speakers “knew for sure what Dr. King, were he only still alive, would have done about America’s gun culture.  He would have led campaigns to reign it in, they said.  And they were probably right.”

Indeed, there is no question that they were.  But when Dr. King’s name emerges in the contemporary discursive, many more voices than just the good-natured community organizers in Brooklyn have attempted to appropriate it.  And some of them are highly questionable at best.  (I won’t divulge any names, but it’s disheartening to see right wing commentators drawing from Dr. King’s life in an effort to promote their welfare state-thinning agenda). The Times’ Clyde Haberman is correct in remarking that King enthusiasts find themselves “roughly equivalent to constitutional interpreters who claim to intuit what the nation’s founders would have thought on 21^st century concerns that were unknowable 225 years ago.”

It is easy to invoke King’s name these days precisely because in many instances, we don’t know what he would have thought of such 21^st century concerns.  While Dr. King is remembered for his struggles against the nation’s greatest evil in the past century, Jim Crow in the South, much of his later work has consequently been forgotten.  This includes, perhaps most notably, his relentless campaign for fair housing, which culminated in the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1968 (the “Fair Housing Act”).  The Act was signed into law about a week after King was killed in Memphis.  And in contrast to the ceaseless speculation about what King “would have thought,” fair housing is an issue for which he spent years organizing, speaking, and protesting.

Most of Dr. King’s significant fair housing work took place in Chicago, a city known at the time as one of the most intensely segregated north of the Mason-Dixon line.  His work in the Windy City in January 1965 is brilliantly recounted in Rick Perlstein’s highly acclaimed political history of the sixties, Nixonland. Perlstein describes the squalid conditions that greeted King upon his arrival in Chicago’s predominantly African-American southwest section: “he rented a four room walk-up for his family in Lawndale (“Slumdale”) neighborhood.  Reporters crowded each other on move-in day, noting the smell of urine, the single hall light, the rumors the block was controlled by gangs.”

King came to Chicago at a time when the city’s mayor, Richard Daley, proudly proclaimed that there was “no segregation in Chicago,” since the city had passed an open housing ordinance a few years prior.  Daley was well aware, however, that without federal enforcement, fair housing in practice would never surface.

Having chosen Chicago for this very reason—to demonstrate why desegregation would not succeed without a sufficient legal infrastructure—King’s efforts, perhaps unsurprisingly, faced fierce hostility.  Perlstein chronicles constituent letters to members of Illinois’s Congressional delegation, one of which read, “Do you or any of your friends live next door to a negro—why should we have them pushed down our throat?”  Later in his stay, King delivered a summer sermon at the Shiloh Baptish Church, where just beyond the church’s walls, “unbeknownst to the cops or to King, kids outside assembled Molotov cocktails.”

Despite the setbacks, King persisted.  On August 5, amidst searing heat, King led a long-planned march through the city, in which he was joined by a number of African-American celebrities.  Perlstein chronicles the copious insults and threats he received while marching, and after a rock grazed his ear, King was forced to pause his march briefly.  Perlstein writes:

He slumped to the ground—the Gandhian moment of truth. ‘I think everybody in that line wanted to kill everybody on the other side of the line,’ a marcher later recalled.  King got up and kept on marching.  We shall overcome.

Indeed, Dr. King’s resilience and grace in the face of unspeakable hardship helped instill in the nation a consciousness about equal opportunity housing that paved the way for the Fair Housing Act of 1968, which outlawed racial discrimination in the sale, rental, and financing of housing. While the hatred recorded by Perlstein eventually killed Dr. King, his legacy no doubt remains strong.

Unfortunately, we are far from achieving Dr. King’s dream, evidenced by the continuance of deeply segregated neighborhoods, schools, and public institutions throughout the United States.  The senseless violence in Arizona further reminds us that our nation painfully lags behind Martin Luther King’s vision.  At St. Ambrose, Dr. King’s life inspires us when we think of the possibilities of service but at the same time, forces us to constantly examine the fact that there is so much work to be done.

Common Myths about Housing Rights

Part four of a four part series on the developing housing rights movement

From the Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions:

Myth: The courts cannot protect housing rights
This is one of the most common myths propagated about the right to housing and other economic and social rights. The notion that housing rights are non-justiciable is usually based on a comparison with civil and political rights. Proponents of this myth believe, among other things, that unlike civil and political rights, economic, social and cultural rights, such as the right to housing, are too vague and too cost-intensive (requiring government action rather than inaction) to be litigated, and can only be implemented in a piecemeal fashion on the basis of policy, but not on law and justice.

Reality: Not only is the right to housing one of the most developed economic, social and cultural rights in terms of content, but a number of the constituent elements of the right to housing are adjudicated in courts of law, tribunals and other legal and quasi-legal forums on a daily basis. For example, in many countries landlord-tenant relations are regulated by legislation and enforced in courts or tribunals; discrimination with respect to accommodation is prohibited in national human rights legislation in countries across the world and land claims are commonly brought before adjudicators. Moreover, almost all countries have passed legislation on various aspects of housing, much of which can be brought before the courts. Concurrently, regional and international human rights bodies, such as the European Court of Human Rights, the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and the UN Committee on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination have directly considered housing rights issues in their case law or jurisprudence. COHRE’s publication Litigating Economic, Social and Cultural Rights: Achievements, Challenges and Strategies outlines a range of housing rights cases and litigation experiences and can be downloaded here.

General Comment No. 4 adopted by the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, identifies six specific areas within the right to housing that are capable of judicial scrutiny: legal appeals aimed at preventing planned evictions through the issuance of injunctions; legal procedures seeking compensation following an illegal eviction; complaints against illegal actions carried out or supported by landlords in relation to rent levels, dwelling maintenance, and racial or other forms of discrimination; allegations of any form of discrimination in the allocation and availability of access to housing; complaints against landlords concerning unhealthy or inadequate housing conditions; and class action suits in situations involving significantly increased levels of homelessness.

Myth: The State must build housing free of charge
Opponents of housing rights have often argued that recognising housing rights would require governments to build housing for the entire population – an entirely State-based, State-determined and State-driven approach to housing. Presumably, this myth came about based on literal interpretations of the term “right to housing”, and the notion that if the right to housing is granted to all, individuals would demand housing from the State despite the limited resources of the State to meet such demands.

Reality: The right to housing has never been interpreted under international law to mean that States must provide housing, free of charge, to all who request it. Rather, under international law, once a State accepts the obligations attached to the right to housing, it agrees to endeavour, by all appropriate means possible, to ensure that everyone has access to housing resources adequate for health, well-being and security. Upon assuming legal obligations, States are required to undertake a series of measures which indicate policy and legislative recognition of each of the constituent aspects of the right to housing, thus creating the necessary conditions so that all residents may enjoy the full entitlements of the right to housing within the shortest possible time-frame. This is both reasonable and realistic. Although international law may not require States to provide housing for everyone who requests it, some countries have voluntarily taken on this responsibility. Legislation in Finland, for example, makes it mandatory for local government to provide housing resources for the severely handicapped under certain circumstances. In other contexts, homeless children in South Africa, homeless families in the United Kingdom, victims of natural disasters or others with acute housing needs in many countries do have rights to immediate housing relief. The Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights has also provided some insight into whether States have to construct housing for all upon demand. The Committee has indicated that the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) requires States parties (that is, States which have ratified the ICESCR) to provide minimum subsistence rights for everyone regardless of the level of economic development of the country. This means that States parties must ensure, at the very least, minimum essential levels of each of the rights in the ICESCR, including the right to housing. Thus, a State party in which any significant number of individuals is deprived of basic shelter and housing would be failing to discharge its obligations under the ICESCR. In meeting their obligations under the ICESCR, States are required to give due priority to those who are most vulnerable and disadvantaged and consequently least able to achieve the right to housing themselves. In other words, State parties should provide housing or access to housing resources to those people who are homeless, inadequately housed or incapable of acquiring the bundle of entitlements that correspond with housing rights.

Myth: The State must fulfill the right to housing immediately
Many States are fearful of the right to housing because they mistakenly believe that the right to housing requires them immediately implement all housing rights obligations to comply with international law, and that a failure to do so will lead them to be classified as human rights violators.

Reality: Of course, it would be ideal if States could fulfil all aspects of the right to housing immediately. International law has recognized the impracticality of this and has responded by interpreting this right to mean that States parties will have some legal obligations that must be undertaken immediately and others that are more long-term or progressive in nature. In other words, protecting and enforcing the right to housing will involve some immediate action and some future action, all of which will eventually lead to the full, society-wide, enjoyment of this right. The immediate action required by State parties to the ICESCR arises out of article 2(2) of the ICESCR which stipulates that States parties “undertake to take steps … by all appropriate means, including particularly the adoption of legislative measures”. In its General Comment No 3, the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights has interpreted this phrase to mean that State parties are obliged to immediately begin to adopt measures towards the full enjoyment by everyone of the right to housing. While the full realization of the right to housing might be achieved progressively, steps toward the goal must be taken within a reasonably short time after the Covenant is ratified by the State. The means by which this must be accomplished include – but are by no means limited to – the adoption of legislation. The Covenant also recognizes that some aspects of the right to housing may not be capable of immediate realization. In turn, according to the Covenant, States are obliged to undertake to achieve progressively the full realization of the rights contained in the ICESCR. The use of the term “progressive realization” is a recognition that full realization of all economic, social and cultural rights, including the right to housing, will generally not be able to be achieved in a short period of time. This does not mean, however, that States can indefinitely defer efforts to ensure the enjoyment of the rights in the Covenant.

For more housing rights myths from COHRE, click here.

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Unfortunately, we cannot cover all the myths about housing rights in one post. However, I just wanted to include one final myth or controversy not mentioned above. That controversy is the incompatibility of positive and negative liberty.  The right to housing and other social, economic, and cultural rights (often referred to as positive liberties), are often pitted against civil and political rights (often referred to as negative liberties).

Read more about this controversy here, and share your thoughts with us!

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I. Housing as a Human Right: Introduction

II. Why Take a Rights-Based Approach to Housing Issues?

III. Housing as a Human Right: Possibilities for Legal Advocacy

IV. Common Myths about Housing Rights

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