PHA-Exchange> US Poor and Homeless Take case to Org of Aamerican States

[Claudio]

From: <SAULELYDIS at aol.com>

>From Kensington Welfare Rights Union/ Poor People's Economic Human Rights
Campaign, member of PHM in the USA
www.economichumanrights.org

March 1, 2005
THE ORGANIZATION OF AMERICAN STATES TO HOLD HEARING ON  THE RIGHT TO
ADEQUATE
HOUSING IN THE UNITED STATES, CANADA AND BRAZIL AT THE REQUEST OF THE POOR
PEOPLE'S ECONOMIC HUMAN RIGHTS CAMPAIGN

Washington, DC: The legal committee of the Poor People's Economic Human
Rights Campaign (a national organization of grassroots poor people's
groups) has been granted a hearing before the Inter-American Commission on
Human
Rights, a principal organ of the Organization of American States, on the
violation of economic human rights in the United States, Canada and Brazil.
The hearing will be held on March 4, 2005 at 4:15 PM at the OAS
Headquarters.  The
groups requested that the Commission hold a hearing on the right to adequate
housing in the Americas in their February session, and that additional
hearings on the rights to adequate income security and health care be
scheduled for future sessions.


"The Inter-American Commission has an important role to play in monitoring
the conduct of States in the region in relation to the right to adequate
housing, a right that is concretely protected in both the American
Declaration and American Convention on Human Rights. At least one of these
instruments applies to every State in the Americas, including the United
States, Canada, and Brazil.  Severe abuses of the right to adequate housing
occur in all of these  countries.  The aim of this hearing is to call the
Inter-American Commission's attention to these abuses, in all of their
manifold forms and human consequences, and to urge it to give higher
visibility to housing rights in its regional human rights monitoring and
adjudication work.

In the United States, more than 3.5 million people suffer homelessness at
some point within a given year, 1.35 million of whom are children.  While
millions are affected by homelessness, even more are at risk because of the
lack of
affordable housing.   Approximately 14.3 million households, representing
almost one in seven households in the United States, are severely burdened
by the cost of housing, with housing payments accounting for more than 50%
of their income.  Of these, approximately 12.5 million are at grave risk of
becoming homeless, because wage levels, particularly for those working at
minimum wage, are woefully insufficient to meet the rising costs of housing.

Although some communities in Brazil enjoy great wealth, many others suffer
from abject poverty, live in starkly inadequate housing, such as slums,
and/or
are homeless altogether.  In particular, severe disparities in the enjoyment
of
the right to adequate housing exist across gender, racial, and ethnic lines.

In Canada, gross disparities exist between indigenous persons and other
Canadians, with a severe shortage of affordable housing disproportionately
affecting indigenous communities.  Canada has not only failed to adequately
address existing disparities, but has implemented a series of retrogressive
measures that have increased and deepened housing violations for poor
Canadians generally.