The Human Right to Housing--A Newsletter
This free newsletter is born out of anger—and hope.
First, the anger: Anger at our client Natasha being forced to drive thirty-five miles each evening to a warehouse in a suburb, where she stocks shelves and fills orders from 6PM to 4AM, even as overnight childcare costs, medical debt, and car repairs cause her to fall behind on her rent. (I won’t use real names here.)
Anger at Amanda’s monthly Supplemental Security Income check received due to her disability being less than the rent that comes due on the first. Anger at Kenneth and his young sons being forced to sleep in a 2004 Buick LeSabre because an injury put him out of work and behind on his rent.
I have represented Natasha and Amanda and Kenneth, and hundreds more people going through similar struggles, in eviction courts in my hometown of Indianapolis. I teach a law school clinic at Indiana University McKinney School of Law, where my students and I go to court each week and advocate for tenants facing eviction.
Their experience is horrible to witness; it is far worse to endure. It should not be like this.
Thus, the anger. Now, the hope: It does not have to be like this.
In our clinic, advocating for individual tenants has led to us also advocating to change the system that is crushing them. We do so in solidarity with the scores of amazing tenants and organizations and groups who are building a movement to make things better—to make housing a fully realized human right.
They have a lot to build on. Polls show a strong majority of Americans believe housing is a human right, reflecting in part the clear mandate of every religious and moral tradition holding that ensuring a safe, secure place to live is a sacred duty. This newsletter will lift up this movement, and the morally and economically bulletproof arguments it is built on.
The best roadmap for what to expect from this newsletter is probably my previous writing. I wrote about our heartbreaking experiences in eviction court here; I wrote about how we can fix the housing crisis here. I wrote about grassroots housing rights activism here, and about religious community calls for the human right to housing here.
More articles like those are coming. And more past articles are linked on my law school home page here, along with my books on religious socialism, socializing prescription medicines, and the service-sector labor movement.
Thank you for reading. More importantly, thank you for caring about Natasha, Amanda, Kenneth, and the millions of others sharing their struggle. Together, we can fulfill their human right to a safe, secure place to live.
Please contact me directly, quigley2@iupui.edu, with any article or post ideas. We are always looking for inspiring campaigns and activists to highlight!