Racial Injustice in Homelessness and Housing in the United States: Report to the UN Special Rapporteur on Contemporary Forms of Racism

This report was submitted to the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights and Ms. Ashwini K.P. (Special Rapporteur contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance). Its analysis, in part, informed Ms. K.P.’s November 2023 official visit to the United States, after which her findings will be presented in a public report to the United Nations Human Rights Council in June 2024. Our report draws on the guidance of numerous human rights monitors, including Special Rapporteurs. Moreover, here are some of the recommendations we urge Ms. K.P. to make to the U.S. following the mission:

1. Require local law enforcement agencies to collect, disaggregate, and share data on housing status of persons stopped, ticketed, arrested, jailed, convicted, and used force against by law enforcement, along with intersections with race;
2. Implement strong financial and legal incentives for local authorities to decriminalize homelessness and life-sustaining activities in public;
3. Re-direct funding from law enforcement to compassionate crisis response teams and establish community-based housing that utilizes a Housing First approach;
4. Abolish carceral civil involuntary commitment systems and ensure adequate mental health care is available and accessible to all;
5. Recognize and implement the human right to adequate housing;
6. Limit background checks for ex-offenders and enable renters to seal or expunge eviction records, increasing housing accessibility

Criminalization of Homelessness and Mental Health in the United States: Report to the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to adequate housing and the Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights

This report was submitted to the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mr. Olivier De Schutter (Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights), and Mr. Balakrishnan Rajagopal (Special Rapporteur on the right to adequate housing). In 2024, both Rapporteurs will be issuing a joint report on efforts made to decriminalize offenses that are frequently associated with homelessness and poverty. Our report draws on the guidance of numerous human rights monitors, including Special Rapporteurs, and urges Mr. De Schutter and Mr. Rajagopal to “issue the strongest and most comprehensive condemnation of the criminalization of homelessness possible.” That is, the U.S. is obligated to do the following:

1. Ensure that federal, state, and local policing agendas do not criminalize unhoused persons;
2. Ensure that private actors are not penalized for providing food and aid to unhoused persons;
3. Ensure that civil involuntary commitment systems are not used to restrain the liberty of unhoused persons with mental disabilities outside the criminal legal system; and
4. Re-direct funding from law enforcement to compassionate crisis response teams and establish community-based housing that utilizes a Housing First approach.

Slavery as a Cause and Consequence of Homelessness in the United States

This report was submitted to the UN Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of slavery, including its causes and its consequences in advance of a report on homelessness as a cause and consequence of slavery to be presented in fall 2023. The report was produced in collaboration with A Way Home America, Aiden Anthony LLC, and True Colors United, and several formerly unhoused individuals.

Read the full report by clicking the link above.

Racial Injustice in Housing and Homelessness in the United States: List of Themes Submission to the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) For the United States Review

This document was submitted to the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination to support the Committee in developing its list of themes for the upcoming review of the U.S., highlighting racial discrimination in homelessness and housing.

Addressing the Impact of COVID-19 on People Experiencing Homelessness Factsheet

This factsheet provides an overview of the disproportionate impacts of COVID-19 on those experiencing homelessness. The factsheet evaluates the positive and negative responses to homelessness during the global health crisis and provides recommendations for how to best limit spread of the virus and protect people who are experiencing homelessness.

Housing and Homelessness in the United States of America: Submission to the United Nations Universal Periodic Review of United States of America

This report details U.S. human rights obligations, and where they are currently not being met, for the review of the United Nations. It also details how the U.S. could meet its existing obligations with further action and policy.

Human Right to Housing Report Card, 2016
This report card assesses the current level of US compliance with the human right to housing in the context of American homelessness. In doing so, we consider the country as a whole, and policy at all levels of government, as it relates to homelessness, including its prevention.

Additional Resources: Previous years report cards

• 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012

Human Rights to Human Reality: A 10 Step Guide to Strategic Human Rights Advocacy
Working consistently for the past two decades, the Law Center is achieving unprecedented success in getting federal agencies to address the criminalization of homelessness as a human rights violation. This guide presents ten steps as a case study of our experiences that we believe can help others achieve broader respect for, and implementation of, human rights.

Extreme Poverty & Human Rights Report 2017: Violations of the Human Rights of Persons Experiencing Homelessness in the United States. A Report to the Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty & Human Rights
This report, submitted to the U.N. Special Rapporteur in advance of his planned December 2017 visit to the U.S., outlines violations of the human rights of persons experiencing homelessness — essentially the most extreme form of poverty — in the United States of America.

CAT Criminalization Shadow Report 2014: Criminalization of Homelessness in the United States of America
Submission to the United Nations Committee Against Torture for its 2014 Review of the United States of America
September 15, 2014
This report was submitted by the Law Center as the chair of the US Human Rights Network’s CAT Homelessness Working Group discussing the criminalization of homelessness in the United States as part of the U.S.’s review by the U.N. Committee Against Torture. The Working Group included the National Coalition for the Homeless and Southern Legal Counsel, and the report was endorsed by an additional thirty-seven organizations and seven individuals.

UPR Housing Report 2014: Housing and Homelessness in the United States of America
Submission to the United Nations Universal Periodic Review of United States of America, September 15, 2014
This report, submitted by the Law Center and the US Human Rights Network UPR Housing Working Group, and endorsed by an additional forty-six organizations and individuals, discusses the housing and homelessness in the United States in relation to the US’s human rights obligations.

CERD Housing Report 2014: A Report to the U.N. Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination on Racial Discrimination in Housing and Homelessness in the United States, July 3, 2014
This report, submitted by the Law Center and LACAN, and endorsed by an additional thirty-nine organizations and individuals, discusses the violations of the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination in the areas of housing and homelessness in the United States.

U.N. Human Rights Committee Calls U.S. Criminalization of Homelessness “Cruel, Inhuman, and Degrading”
The U.N. Human Rights Committee in Geneva condemned the criminalization of homelessness in the United States as “cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment” that violates international human rights treaty obligations, and called upon the U.S. government to take corrective action.

Homeless Persons Access to Injustice Fact Sheet
This fact sheet, describing the challenges faced by many homeless persons in their encounters with the criminal justice system, was presented at the April 1st, 2014 consultation on Access to Justice to over fifty representatives from the Departments of Justice, State, Housing & Urban Development, and the White House Office of Domestic Policy Council.

Additional Resources

• Welcome Home recorded webinar and
  slides.

Welcome Home: The Rise of Tent Cities in the United States
This report documents the rise of homeless encampments and “tent cities” across the United States, and the legal and policy responses to both.

Cruel, Inhuman, and Degrading: Homelessness in the United States under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, Submitted to the U.N. Human Rights Committee
This report details violations of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) stemming from U.S. policy toward the more than 3.5 million people who experience homelessness in the U.S. annually. While the U.S. government should be commended for recognizing that the imposition of criminal penalties on homeless people is counterproductive public policy in violation of the ICCPR and Convention Against Torture, criminalization of homelessness at the state and local levels continues to cause significant rights violations.