Law Center Statement on Today’s United Nations Report Decrying Ongoing Human Rights Abuses Against Unhoused People WASHINGTON, D.C. – (November 3, 2023) Today, the United Nations Human Rights Committee highlighted serious and ongoing patterns of human rights abuses -- including those against people experiencing homelessness and poverty -- in the Concluding Observations from its recent convening that investigated the United States’ compliance with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.  The Concluding Observations devote an entire paragraph to the human rights abuses faced by people experiencing homelessness. It reads: The Committee is concerned about reports of an increase [...]

U.S. Receives Failing Grades on Human Right to Housing Report Card Limited Progress During Pandemic Offset By Inactions Since WASHINGTON, D.C. – On October 5th, 2023, the National Homelessness Law Center (Law Center), in partnership with the University of Miami Law School Human Rights Clinic, issued the Human Right to Housing Report Card 2023. The report card condemns the U.S.government's ongoing failure to stem the tide of homelessness by neglecting its responsibility to ensure adequate, affordable housing is available to all. The U.S. receives a failing grade in “affordability” and still has much room for [...]

Federal Police Use Violent Force Against Family Living in Park – Pattern of Violence Continues Forest Service Police Injured Disabled Family Members Washington, D.C. | August 23, 2023 - The National Coalition for Housing Justice (NCHJ) calls on the Biden-Harris administration to stop using federal police to respond to homelessness. In May of this year, undercover U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management police officers violently arrested Judy, Timber, and Brooks Roberts for living in a camper in the Payette National Forest north of Boise, Idaho. They were forced to live in the park after [...]

National Homelessness Law Center Responds to Murder of Jordan Neely  (May 5, 2023, Washington, DC) – The National Homelessness Law Center is outraged over the strangulation and murder of Jordan Neely Monday, May 1, 2023.  The Law Center condemns the NYPD, Mayor Eric Adams, and Governor Kathy Hochul for their failure to hold Jordan’s vigilante killer responsible, and for their subsequent efforts to shield his murderer and smear a murder victim.  But these government officials’ statements and actions are symptomatic of the broader problem that led to this tragedy—a toxic cultural obsession with anti-Blackness and dehumanization of the poor.     As the national legal group dedicated to ending and preventing homelessness, we seek to elevate a reality already deeply understood by unhoused communities and their allies: that racialized, state-sanctioned brutality occurs with disproportionate force and frequency against both the [...]

Statement of the National Homelessness Law Center on Planned Eviction of McPherson Square Encampment   (February 13, 2023) On February 2, the DC government announced that the McPherson Square encampment community in downtown D.C. will be forcibly evicted on February 15, two months earlier than previously announced and in the midst of hypothermia season. The planned eviction of more than 70 unsheltered D.C. residents comes after the D.C. Deputy Mayor for Health and Human Services Wayne Turnage requested the National Park Service expedite the clearing. The planned eviction directly conflicts with the federal Plan to End [...]

As Homelessness Crisis Continues, New Strategic Plan Condemns Criminalization, Calls for Housing as a Human Right FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE December 19, 2022 Media Contact: Erika Lopez (202)638-2535 x110 | elopez@homelesslaw.org (December 19, 2022, Washington, DC) – The National Homelessness Law Center (Law Center) welcomes the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness’ new All In: Federal Strategic Plan to End Homelessness, issued today as the Department of Housing & Urban Development also released its annual count numbers, which at more than half a million people—recognized as an undercount—remains [...]

U.S. Representative Cori Bush,  W.A. State Representative Nicole Macri,  Los Angeles Councilmember Mike Bonin and  Advocates to Receive Awards for Work to End Homelessness  Additional Awardees Include: Patricia Mullahy Fugere, Alston & Bird LLP and A Bigger Vision Films FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE November 16, 2022 Media Contact: Erika Lopez (202)638-2535 x110 | elopez@homelesslaw.org (November 16, 2022, Washington, DC) – The National Homelessness Law Center (Law Center) will be honoring U.S. Representative Cori Bush, Washington State Representative Nicole Macri, Los Angeles Councilmember Mike Bonin, Washington Legal Clinic [...]

Ninth Circuit Upholds & Clarifies Homeless Persons’ Right to Survive in Absence of Housing Court Reiterates Martin v. Boise Holding that Civil and Criminal Punishments for Homelessness are Cruel & Unusual FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE September 29, 2022 Media Contact: Erika Lopez (202)638-2535 x110 | elopez@homelesslaw.org (September 29, 2022, Washington, DC) – On September 28, people experiencing homelessness in Grants Pass, Oregon—and across the Ninth Circuit—could breathe a sigh of relief as their right to survive in the absence of adequate housing was reaffirmed. The U.S. Ninth [...]

Criminalization of Homelessness is Racially Discriminatory, Must be Abolished, Say UN Human Rights Experts Also Calls for “All Necessary Measures to Eliminate Segregation” FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE August 30, 2022 Media Contact: Erika Lopez (202)638-2535 x110 | elopez@homelesslaw.org GENEVA, SWITZERLAND- The U.N. Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination in Geneva yesterday stated “it remains concerned at the increasing number of state and local laws that criminalize homelessness and at the disproportionately high number of persons belonging to racial and ethnic minorities affected by homelessness,” and called [...]