Housing

Problem:  How is homelessness defined?

A.    As a mental condition

B.     As a lack of productivity, effort to be employable

C.     UN Declaration defines housing as a human right

D.    We need to perceive housing as a human right

1. Poor credit scores, inability to attain credit contributes to homelessness.

2. The average age of a homeless person is nine-years-old. Children and families are increasingly homeless.

3. People of color are over-represented amongst the homeless, especially black people. Black men are more likely to be homeless. Prison contributes to homelessness.  Black people, who are impacted, need to be part of the solution.

4. Affordable housing is an issue with gentrification in urban centers. States being beholden to Wall Street through fear of losing their bond ratings discourages them from investing in more housing and safety net programs. State governments, our national government, should not be run like a for-profit corporation.

5. Lack of employment, high unemployment contributing to homelessness. Homelessness is a universal problem. Economic situation, foreclosure crisis.

6. Home ownership should be a human right. Right to be afforded decent housing needs to be a considered a right, not a privilege. The right to habitable housing should be in the Constitution. Speculation raises the price of housing beyond what most can afford. Because some people’s work is arbitrarily given a greater value and they receive a higher wages; therefore, out pricing everyone else.           

7. Out priced because of lack of increase in income, though the cost of living has significantly increased. We stymie small business, microeconomics, bartering, by regulation, permit and license requirements that benefit larger entities like malls and Wal-Mart’s.  The cost of doing business is too high for the small player. 

8. States have very little money for low income housing, so in Vermont we are attempting to get a state bank.

Vision:

1. Housing is a Human right

2. State budgets aren’t proscribed by Wall Street

3. Expand view of what is capital, maybe people could provide labor that  doesn’t have money, a bartering system.

Solutions:

1. Micro business as a solution for creating income for housing.

2. 80 % of foreclosures not legitimate

3. Foreclosure blocking. 

4. Housing take overs.

5. Homesteading:  turn on the utilities; receive mail for a certain period of time, then in most states you have to go through eviction process.110 houses taken over in Philadelphia with the Poor People’s Campaign.

Adverse possession:  “is a process by which premises can change ownership. It is a common law concept concerning the title to real property (land and the fixed structures built upon it). By adverse possession, title to another's real property can be acquired without compensation, by holding the property in a manner that conflicts with the trueowner's rights for a specified period. For example, squatter's rights are a specific form of adverse possession” ~Wikipedia

6. Utilize public property.

7. Improves situations for existing homeless to have non-homeless join. Visible stand to help the homeless

8. Foreclosure resistance:  Keeping foreclosed person from becoming evicted as the homeless committee did today after leaving landlord tenant court in DC.