WILL A POST-PANDEMIC UNITED STATES RECOGNIZE THE RIGHT TO HOUSING?
BY JUSTIN DeWAELE
Amidst the public health and economic crises caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, and the structural inequities it has laid bare, reinvigorated movements for economic and social justice are gaining support and visibility in their efforts to advance economic and social rights for populations bearing the brunt of the pandemic. The overarching question that political actors and commentators are debating is: Will the pandemic provide the impetus to fundamentally change the policy regime towards a framework that advances equality and economic and social rights, or will the United States simply revert back to the neoliberal status quo once the pandemic stabilizes?
Central to this question is the role the incoming Biden administration will play in championing a paradigm-shifting program for economic and social justice. At their most optimistic, commentators on the left have noted the mandate the new administration has for a combination of an FDR-like expansion of the welfare state and a Lyndon Johnson-esque expansion of civil rights. At their most sober, commentators predict a pragmatic centrism tempered by Republican opposition to the more expansive wishes of progressives.
One would be hard pressed to find a starker theatre for this contestation than in the question of housing. Long before the pandemic hit, housing advocates focused on combating gentrification, working to end homelessness, and advocating for the production of affordable and permanent support housing amid historically high housing costs, especially in expensive coastal cities such as San Francisco and New York.
But like with so many other societal problems, the COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated America’s affordable housing crisis. With unemployment rolls skyrocketing, people are finding it increasingly difficult to cover basic living expenses. In April 2020, 31 percent of renters in the United States were unable to pay their rent. In August, the Aspen Institute estimated that 30-40 million people in the United States, or somewhere between 29-43 percent of renter households, could lose their homes over the next several months as the CARES Act supports expired. Before the unprecedented federal eviction moratorium went into effect in September, millions of tenants were on the brink of eviction.
The United Nations has long recognized the right to adequate housing. It is acknowledged in no less than three international human rights accords.
Now, with Congress in a stalemate over passing a new stimulus bill, the turn of the new year could mean a tsunami of evictions across the country. New Census data shows that 5.8 million adults are between somewhat and very likely to face eviction or foreclosure in the next two months. Racial inequities in this looming eviction crisis persist. The Census Bureau’s Week 18 Housing Pulse Survey indicates that while 22 percent of white renter households report slight or no confidence that they can pay next month’s rent on time, 33 percent of Latinx renter households and 42 percent of Black renter households say the same thing.
The enormity of the crisis at hand has led the housing movement towards bolder demands. Not only are organizers calling for more affordable housing and rent control, as they have done for years, a central goal of advocates across the country is now a homes guarantee, or the human right to housing. The right to housing movement, made up of a network of tenants’ unions, nonprofits, labor, social justice coalitions, and grassroots organizers, is on the move.
In May 2020, renters across the United States refused to pay their rent, in what is believed to be the largest rent strike in the country in decades. Other actions have further intensified the pressure for an acknowledgement of the right to housing. In Oakland, California, a group called Moms 4 Housing illegally occupied a home, in protest of rapidly rising property prices (before the pandemic hit), for two months until a judge evicted them in January 2020.
Notably, one of the defendants, and the leader of Moms 4 Housing, called for testimony from “expert witnesses concerning federal and international legal authorities regarding the right to housing” in the trial. Just a couple of weeks after the eviction, however, Wedgewood Inc., the property owner, struck a deal with the city of Oakland to turn over the property to the Oakland Community Land Trust and allow the families to remain in the house, after public mobilization.
In March 2020, homeless and housing insecure families, part of a coalition called Reclaim & Rebuild Our Community, occupied 12 vacant homes in northeastern Los Angeles, claiming that the authorities had failed to provide adequate shelter for them during the pandemic. In November, these families struck a deal with the Housing Authority of the city of Los Angeles, (HACLA) and the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans)—the owners of the properties in question—that allows the families and others to temporarily live in 22 of the homes legally.
South Africa, Belgium, Scotland, and France are among the polities that recognize the right to adequate shelter in their respective national constitutions.
In a recent dramatic turn of events, however, police arrested and evicted 20 additional families who recently attempted to move into more of the vacant Los Angeles homes the night before, and the day of, Thanksgiving. Sixty-two arrests were made in total on November 25 and 26. Caltrans owns 460 vacant homes in this area, and the Reclaim & Rebuild Our Community coalition is attempting to negotiate with city and state authorities to make the homes available to unhoused Angelenos.
Housing Justice 4 All, a New York-based tenants’ rights coalition, whose platform includes a right to housing, has been fighting for a homes guarantee in the state of New York since 2017 and for an eviction moratorium and rent forgiveness since the start of the pandemic. The coalition has successfully advocated for a number of policy changes, including New York City’s eviction moratorium, a statewide rent stabilization law, and stronger protections for tenants against rental increases.
The right to housing movement has translated some of its grassroots momentum into significant political support. In November 2019, in perhaps the most ambitious legislative effort to support affordable housing in decades, Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) introduced the Homes for All Act, a $1 trillion investment in housing that would include building 12 million new public housing units over 10 years, and a $200 billion infusion into the National Housing Trust Fund. Rep. Omar followed this with another bill in April that would cancel rent and mortgage payments for millions of Americans unable to pay due to the COVID-19 pandemic for the duration of the national emergency period.
Around the same time that Rep. Omar introduced her bill, Rep. Pramila Jayapal (WA-07) introduced the Housing is a Human Right Act of 2020 into Congress. These efforts build upon what states and the federal government have already done to provide housing relief to struggling Americans. The landmark CARES Act, the COVID-19 relief package passed by Congress in March, included a 120-day eviction moratorium on all federally subsidized properties. Fifteen states and 24 cities also passed their own eviction moratoriums in some form over the summer.
This year, the California state legislature debated a bill that would have guaranteed a right to housing in the state and required state agencies to house children and families at risk of homelessness. That bill ultimately did not pass, but instead a pandemic tenant and homeowner’s relief package passed that includes an eviction moratorium through February 2021. Dane County, Wisconsin, has in fact recognized the human right to housing since 2012.
The United States, which has a homeless population of roughly 570,000, has not ratified any agreement that would make the right to adequate housing enforceable within its borders. This omission has not been lost on the United Nations.
Over 70 candidates who ran in this November’s general election at the local, state, and federal levels pledged to support a homes guarantee for all Americans. Pledged candidates included Senator Bernie Sanders, Congressmember-elect Jamaal Bowman (NY-16) and Congressmember-elect Cori Bush (MO-01). Led by People’s Action, the Homes Guarantee builds on Rep. Omar’s bill and calls for the construction of 12 million social housing units, eradicating homelessness, reinvesting in existing public housing, decarbonizing public housing, paying reparations for racist housing policies, and de-commodifying housing.
President-elect Joe Biden signaled his support for a robust housing relief plan during the campaign and now in his presidential transition. During the campaign, Biden joined fellow lawmakers and called for a federal rental and mortgage payment forgiveness policy for Americans who were unable to pay these expenses due to COVID-19. The housing plan on his campaign website declared, “Housing should be a right, not a privilege.” The plan outlined several policies he would prioritize, including ending redlining, increasing the supply and lowering the overall cost of housing, expanding rental assistance, and pursuing a comprehensive approach to ending homelessness, among other measures.
While the call for a right to housing may be unfamiliar in a highly market-driven society such as the United States, it is not at all new or peculiar to this context. The United Nations has long recognized the right to adequate housing. It is acknowledged in no less than three international human rights accords: the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) (1966), the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (1966), and the Universal Declaration on Human Rights (1948). South Africa, Belgium, Scotland, and France are among the polities that recognize the right to adequate shelter in their respective national constitutions, according to an article by Maria Foscarinis in the Harvard Human Rights Journal.
The United States, which has a homeless population of roughly 570,000, has not ratified any agreement that would make the right to adequate housing enforceable within its borders. This omission has not been lost on the United Nations. In 2018, the UN’s Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty, Philip Alston, published a report to the UN Human Rights Council in which he condemned the treatment of the homeless population and lack of access to affordable housing in the United States. Important gains were made during the Obama administration in reducing homelessness and protecting the rights of the homeless, but barring any federal legislative changes in housing law, such as ratifying the ICESCR, these gains may always be ephemeral and geographically inconsistent.
The neoliberal model of economic regulation, with its retrenchment of social welfare expenditures, has fallen out of favor with large swathes of the American public. Skyrocketing housing costs and the ballooning of the country’s homeless population in certain states and metro areas over the last couple decades have rendered housing one of the most acute and visible failures of the neoliberal regime. Thus, the new Biden administration’s legitimacy will to a significant degree rest on its ability to provide relief for millions of renters and homeowners on the brink of losing their homes, improve housing affordability overall and reduce homelessness.
Biden’s transformative political moment seems within reach—especially if Democrats take control of the Senate in January. The degree of that success will be determined by those in the streets, in city council chambers, state legislatures, and Congress, fighting for their economic and social rights today.
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Justin DeWaele is a Pacific Council member and a co-founder and writer at Upzone SoCal.
The views and opinions expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Pacific Council.
