By Lola Rael

Human Rights or Mutual Aid: Comparing Possible Remedies to Mass Houselessness

By Lola Rael

As many as 15% of American families are housinginsecure. The United States has reached a point of crisis, as the population of people without options to attain viable housing, the houseless and houseless-adjacent, has exploded since 2000. In recent years, panic over the rising cost of housing has erupted across the globe. Houselessness has proliferated particularly within the United States, one of the world’s wealthiest nations. This impending crisis most acutely impacts those seeking housing immediately and unable to afford it, but given that the housing and rental markets are embedded within the economy, its effects are actually diffuse. In this essay, I will explore two different frameworks for understanding and finding solutions to the housing crisis. One approach is based in human rights language and seeks to use the human rights apparatus to rectify the lack of housing access. The other addresses the housing crisis with direct action and a mutual aid framework, seeking housing justice without the state and the human rights apparatus as intermediary. Ultimately, I conclude that to combat the housing crisis and pursue housing for all, a combination of these two approaches will be necessary. The housing crisis has crept up on the nation over the past few decades. As of 2020, there are over 550,000 individuals living in the United States without a home ("State of Homelessness” 2020). To young people who belong to “Generation Z,” a statistic like this might sound horrific but not surprising; we don’t know a world without mass houselessness. However, as a phenomenon, mass houselessness is actually relatively recent. Housing advocates Molly Beckhardt, Paul Boden and June JS note that “before the early 1980s…far too many lived in poverty, but people were not forced to live in the streets” (Beckhardt and Boden 2020). In the past 40 years, this issue has rapidly increased in visibility and launched into the public consciousness. How did the situation become so dire? Rather than the result of a single failed policy, affordable housing options dried up gradually over the second half of the 20th century. Through the late 1930s, the New Deal spurred heavy investment in improving housing conditions. Many “slum clearance” programs established new public housing buildings, a significant number of which fell into disrepair and were eventually razed. Building complexes to house the poor proved to be expensive and troublesome, and in the 1940s, the Federal Housing Association instead began providing highly subsidized loans to buy houses in the suburbs, finding

this strategy to be more cost-effective and in line with urban mobility patterns (Zuegel 2017). As federal money bolstered the homeownership program, public housing faced cyclical disinvestment from the government and public housing projects began to fail. In the postwar years, the US was a nation of homeowners (Ibid). Since then, homeownership rates have been in steady decline with renting on the rise, spiking particularly after the housing bubble burst in 2005. Owning a home is now out of reach for people at middle income levels, leaving them no choice but to rent. In 1950, if a young family wanted to find a home, they would choose to buy a house, as this was the financially responsible option made possible by the government. Today, no such option exists for people without extensive savings. The economic state of the present feels bleak; income equality is widening, employment opportunities are few, and even those with jobs are being made to choose between paying housing costs and buying groceries. For many residents of the US, taking on debt is the only way to put a roof over their heads. John Bowe’s groundbreaking New Yorker article, “Nobodies,” follows the stories of agricultural workers migrating from Mexico and Central America in search of livelihood (Bowe 2003). This piece exposes the system of continued indebtedness used by contractors in the agricultural industry to keep workers in perpetual poverty, impelling them to remain in an abusive work environment. The manipulation of the Immokalee workers is a synecdoche of systemic poverty. Insufficient income necessitates buying on credit and taking on loans, which often leaves people trapped and unable to pay off more money that they didn’t have in the first place. This is what makes it nearly impossible to afford a house or even to rent long-term for Americans who don’t have a safety net or inherited wealth. What systems are in place to address such a crisis? Supposedly, housing is a human right. A United Nations fact sheet sheds some light on the current status of housing within the formal human rights apparatus. A right to adequate housing has been in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights since 1948, and it is explicitly recognized in 12 different documents adopted by the United Nations, including the International Bill of Rights ("Fact Sheet No.21"). This document stipulates that “housing-related costs for individuals, families and households are commensurate with income levels.” It later elaborates that “to protect effectively the housing rights of a population, Governments must ensure that any possible violations of these rights by ‘third parties’

such as landlords or property developers are prevented” ("Fact Sheet No.21"). This is supposed protection from the very situation that so many Americans are victims of at present—even those who are able to secure housing are at the whim of predatory individuals and corporations. The United Nations dictates that it is the responsibility of the government to protect the population from landlords or developers who make housing inaccessible and violate individuals' right to secure housing. The United Nations implores all nation-states to create legislation that will house all. Although the UN’s documents are utopian and idealistic, implementing a right to housing is a step that many national governments have recently undertaken, namely Scotland, South Africa, and France. The United States does not name a right to housing in either its Constitution or federal law, and it does not recognize these rights stipulated by the United Nations in any enforceable capacity. We have federal and state programs that address houselessness and subsidies available with the goal of making housing accessible for all, like Section 8 housing choice vouchers, but these programs are failing to address the full need. One tactic to potentially manifest housing for all is invocation of the human rights apparatus. Our government is not sufficiently meeting the standard of international human rights, and we are entitled to hold it accountable. Molly Beckhardt, Paul Boden and June LS of the Appeal, a journal dedicated to criminal law, laid out the argument that the US government has failed to provide adequate housing access, applying a language of human rights: “There are certain universal human needs that any governing structure—from local to federal—is responsible for.” According to the authors, needs such as housing “do not belong on the open market.” This perspective emphasizes where the state has failed to protect a universal human right. These authors implore the state to take responsibility as “the right to a house should not be predicated on the money in one’s pocket and the government’s role must be to secure this right” (Beckhardt and Boden 2020). In “On The Jewish Question,” Karl Marx discusses the right to private property among other rights treated as universally ensured. Marx sees a right to private property as a right to “self-interest”; those who exercise it opt out of participation in the collective flourishing. In his view, the right to private property, among the rights to liberty, security, and quality, “ensure egoism.” If these are the rights our society

guarantees, egoistic “need and private interest” and the “preservation of their property” bind individuals together rather than a shared concern for all (Marx 1844). While the framework of a human right to housing, right to private property, and a system of law can back up the argument for accessible housing, Marx envisions a world with housing for all that does not predicate upon property and rights. This viewpoint is shared by mutual aid groups and radical housing justice movements, who use a framework of community, sharing, and equality to create housing that is accessible to all and dominated by none. Unlike the global and national scale of the human right apparatus, mutual aid operates at the local level, based in communities uniting around a common struggle, looking out for one another and acting directly to meet needs. In “Solidarity Not Charity,” mutual aid expert Dean Spade lists as a quality of effective liberation, “sharing things rather than hoarding and protecting private property.” He says of occupying homes following a disaster that mutual aid can “generate boldness and a willingness to defy illegitimate authority” and that breaking the law to care for the community “can be a reparative experience when we have been trained to follow rules” (Spade 2020). An example of a mutual aid-inspired approach to housing justice can be found at the Museum of Reclaimed Urban Space, a nonprofit gallery in New York City dedicated to sharing the radical history of New York’s Lower East Side. The narrative put forth by the museum is an example of successful direct-action housing activism. The gallery is located in an active squat on Avenue C and provides photographs and information on a dozen other squats around the East Village. These buildings were abandoned and repossessed by the City of New York. In 2002, the City made a deal to sell the buildings to the Urban Homesteading Alliance Board for $1, on the condition that the squats would be brought up to fire code. Now they live on as limited equity co-operatives, where democratically approved memberresidents have full control of all decisions made regarding the building (“Reclaiming”) The Museum of Reclaimed Urban Space pays tribute to direct-action housing justice in response to New York’s rapidly dropping rate of affordable housing. The squatters had no interest in engaging the state or fighting for their space using a human rights framework. Instead, they attempted to evade interaction with law enforcement and address their needs by occupying the space without requesting permission. This action began back in the 1990s. While American cities

have “cleaned up” and made urban poverty less visible, economic conditions have not improved to lower the rate of houselessness. Compounded by heightened police surveillance and other recent conditions that threaten makeshift housing, the necessity for such action has only increased over the past thirty years. The squatting movement in the East Village resulted in successful permanent housing and a sustainable solution when the squatters collaborated with the city government to legitimize the situation. However, not all squatters are so lucky. Limited equity co-ops are a progressive housing tool that adds diversity to the rental market, but for some they are still prohibitively expensive. While the squatters met their immediate needs for shelter and the state acknowledged the community’s need for housing, the action stopped there. Direct action and a mutual aid framework work well to bridge a gap and provide communities with resources withheld by the government. But is squatting any sort of viable solution to combat a crisis at this scale? Amongst these two schools of thought on the best path to housing justice, there are a few instances of overlap. One organization, Moms 4 Housing, based in Oakland, CA, draws upon both a human rights approach as well as a more radical one. Founder Dominique Walker, an Oakland native and single mother, moved back to California after fleeing an abusive situation. Once home, she realized how much rent had soared and struggled to find a place for her family to stay. Eventually, they and another family began occupying a home that had been vacant for two years but was owned by a real estate company known for flipping houses (“Housing is a Human Right” 2020). These women are solving an immediate need for shelter by occupying the vacant home. They are acting on a basis of care for their families and set a precedent that will make it easier for the next family to occupy a vacant home, also an act of community care. The mutual aid approach is evident in Walker’s concern for the well-being of her family and her community as justification for moving in. Now, Walker and her organization advocate for guaranteed housing for all using a human rights platform. The group has been meeting with California Assemblyman Rob Bonta to discuss the possibility of establishing legislation that would “establish a fundamental human right to housing” (Solomon 2020). Moms 4 Housing understood the limitations of the human rights apparatus in meeting their immediate needs. They needed a place to sleep immediately and realized that

demanding their human rights to housing be addressed was a marathon rather than a sprint. This pragmatic navigation between two schools of thought again recalls the Immokalee workers, who fought for rights as workers, but who also went beyond the human rights framework with a mutual aid ethos of care for one another. After comparing these two methods of attaining housing and addressing the crisis of houselessness in the United States, I conclude that we need to employ a combination of these two approaches to secure short-term shelter and long-term housing solutions. The federal government has failed to provide adequate housing for all. To survive, we need to hold the government responsible using the human rights framework to advocate for expansive new housing policy. We also need to engage with our communities, to check in with them and to be willing to take risks with them, to see if we can meet housing needs without involving the state.

Bibliography

Beckhardt, Molly; Boden, Paul; LS, June. “HOUSING IS A HUMAN RIGHT.” The Appeal. Apr. 24, 2020.https://theappeal.org/housing-is-ahuman-right/

Bowe, John. “Nobodies” The New Yorker Magazine. April 13th, 2003. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2003/ 04/21/nobodies

Marx, Karl. “On the Jewish Question” Marx/Engels Collected Works, Vol. 3. pp. 146-174 (1975 (1844))

Solomon, Molly. “What Would 'Housing as a Human Right' Look Like in California?” KQED. Feb. 12, 2020. https://www.kqed.org/news/11801176/whatwould-housing-as-a-human-right-look-like-incalifornia

Spade, Dean. “Solidarity Not Charity” Social Text. Duke University Press. 2020. Zuegel, Devon Marisa. “Financing Suburbia: How government mortgage policy determined where you live.” Strong Towns. Aug. 16, 2017. https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2017/8/1 5/financing-suburbia-how-governmentmortgage-policy-determined-where-youlive

“Fact Sheet No.21, The Human Right to Adequate Housing” United Nations. n.d. https://www.un.org/ruleoflaw/files/FactSheet2 1en.pdf

“Housing as a Human Right” Radical Imagination Podcast. 2020.https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ housing-as-a-humanright/id1479782630?i=10004 67028293

“Reclaiming Space Squats” Museum of Reclaimed Urban Space Website. http://www.morusnyc.org/reclaiming-spacesquats/

“State of Homelessness: 2020 Edition” National Alliance to End Homelessness. 2020.https://endhomelessness.org/homeless ness-in-america/homelessnessstatistics/state-of-homelessness-2020/