O acesso à moradia adequada está na agenda dos Estados Unidos

Este é o press release final sobre a minha missão nos EUA como relatora da ONU. Um pequeno documento com recomendações e observações preliminares já foi divulgado e está disponível neste link, em inglês. Devo apresentar o relatório final sobre a missão em março, ao Conselho de Direitos Humanos da ONU.

Já voltei ao Brasil e estou com muita vontade de contar minhas impressões sobre os EUA! Devo fazer isso na quarta-feira que vem, 18, na Casa da Cidade (a confirmar). Aqui no blog, vamos voltar a falar das discussoes da nossa terrinha.

“Acesso à moradia adequada está na agenda dos Estados Unidos”, afirma especialista da ONU

A relatora especial da ONU para o direito à moradia adequada, Raquel Rolnik, declarou no final de sua missão oficial aos Estados Unidos que “milhões de americanos estão gastando altas parcelas de seu orçamento para pagar seus alugueis e hipotecas, enfrentam despejos e remoções e vivem em condições inadequadas”.

“O contingente de pessoas sem teto continua a se elevar, com um número crescente de famílias e indivíduos que acabam indo morar na rua” destacou a especialista da ONU, após visitar Washington DC, Nova York, Chicago, Nova Orleans, Los Angeles, Pacoima e a reserva indígena de Pine Ridge. “E a crise econômica exacerbou esta situação.”

Os EUA têm há muito tempo uma história de compromisso com moradia decente, segura e acessível, que remonta ao National Housing Act de 1934. Porém, certos grupos como minorias e indígenas não se beneficiaram de forma igualitária desta política.

Nas últimas décadas, fundos federais para moradia popular foram cortados, levando à diminuição do estoque e da qualidade da moradia subsidiada. Durante este período, foi empreendido grande esforço para redesenhar o sistema de aluguel e moradia pública nos Estados Unidos, frequentemente por meio da demolição de moradias públicas e construção de condomínios de renda mista. “Apesar de ser um objetivo positivo, a implementação de empreendimentos de renda mista em muitos casos tem como consequência o esvaziamento, práticas discriminatórias e redução do estoque de habitação adequada e acessível para moradores de baixa renda”, destacou Raquel.

A relatora observou que a nova administração está pensando de forma ampla e crítica para enfrentar e resolver a crise de moradia adequada no país e reverteu décadas de cortes orçamentários, destinando recursos adicionais para moradia. Porém, é necessário um arco mais amplo e efetivo de opções de moradia acessível, particularmente para os mais pobres. Raquel lembrou que durante o desenvolvimento e implementação dessas alternativas, os moradores e a comunidade devem ser parceiros no processo de planejamento e decisão, como estabelecido por tratados internacionais de direitos humanos.

Durante sua missão de 18 dias, a especialista da ONU se reuniu com o autoridades públicas federais, estaduais e locais, com o Departamento de Estado e com o Departamento de Moradia e Desenvolvimento Urbano (HUD, em inglês), entre outros.

Ela também participou de audiências públicas em todas as cidade visitada e se engajou em extensos debates com representantes de uma ativa rede de organizações não governamentais, centenas de moradores e pessoas em situação de rua. “Moradia é um direito humano”, foi a palavra de ordem mais ouvida durante esses encontros abertos.

A relatora especial agradece ao governo dos Estados Unidos pelo convite para realizar esta missão e aprecia a abertura e o apoio demonstrados.

Onde os Estados Unidos são terceiro mundo

Reportagem publicada no blog da Patrícia Campos Mello, correspondente do Estadão em Washington

A relatora especial da ONU para o direito à moradia, a brasileira Raquel Rolnik, passou 18 dias em sete cidades dos Estados Unidos e encontrou uma situação digna de terceiro mundo. “Fiquei assustada com a situação da moradia nos Estados Unidos”, disse Raquel, que também é professora da Faculdade de Arquitetura e Urbanismo da Universidade de São Paulo.

Ela já vinha pesquisando o problema da moradia nos EUA há tempos e esperava se deparar com os estragos da crise das hipotecas subprime. Mas encontrou coisa pior: gente morando em carros, muitos moradores de ruas em “cidades de barracas”, famílias inteiras sem-teto, apartamentos superlotados, com três famílias. “É muito difícil achar moradia acessível, as pessoas estão gastando 80%, 90% da renda com aluguel ou parcela do financiamento”, disse Raquel. “Quando a crise chegou, grande parte da moradia pública tinha sido demolida e não foi substituída em números suficientes.”

Ela esteve em Washington, Nova York, Wilkes-Barre, Chicago, New Orleans, Los Angeles e na reserva indígena Pine Ridge.

A ONU tenta desde 2005 enviar um relator para a moradia para os EUA, mas vinha sendo ignorada pelo governo Bush. Só agora, no governo Obama, mais aberto à atuação de instituições multilaterais como a ONU, é que a relatora recebeu sinal verde.

A direita americana esperneou. Um editorial do jornal conservador Washington Times disse que a visita de Raquel era parte da “usurpação gradual da soberania americana” e perguntava porque ela não ia pesquisar a moradia no Brasil.

“Ela deveria voltar para o lugar de onde saiu”, dizia o editorial. “A culpa burocrática de Miss Rolnik deveria ser dirigida ao Brasil, onde 28,9% da população urbana vive em favelas.”

“É claro que de forma absoluta, o problema da moradia é mais grave nos países em desenvolvimento”, disse Raquel. “Mas, de forma relativa, é igual – nos EUA, são milhões de pessoas sem acesso à moradia, no país mais rico do planeta.”

A relatora da ONU diz ser muito difícil comparar Brasil e EUA. Os EUA tiveram, por muitos anos, uma política de moradia abrangente, que foi sendo desmantelado desde o governo Reagan. O país está em uma trajetória descendente, só amenizada por algumas medidas recentes do governo Obama, ela diz.

Já o Brasil, explica Raquel, nunca deve uma política de moradia popular em grande escala. Eram sempre iniciativas da própria população – favelas, loteamentos irregulares – que então eram substituídas por COABs ou Cingapuras, mas em escala muito menor.

Raquel está preparando um relatório sobre tudo o que viu nos EUA. Ela visitou projetos de habitação do governo, bairros com muitas casas em execução de hipoteca, locais onde se concentram moradores de rua e as chamadas tent-cities, que reunem sem-teto em barracas. Também promoveu assembléias com moradores e reuniu-se com representantes de ONGs, além de integrantes do governo Obama. Em março, ela apresenta seu relatório diante do Conselho de Direitos Humanos da ONU, em Genebra.

Fotos da missão em Los Angeles

A missão da relatoria especial da ONU para o direito à moradia adequada nos Estados Unidos esteve em Los Angeles de 2 a 4 de novembro.

Há fotos disponíveis aqui e aqui.

U.N. visits America’s Third World

Artigo de Nick Coleman publicado no jornal StarTribune, de Minnesota, sobre a visita à reserva indígena de Pine Ridge.

Americans may be forgiven for thinking we have enough problems without United Nations inspectors traveling to a South Dakota Indian reservation to examine dismal housing conditions among the poorest of our poor. But we may not be forgiven for letting our housing problems fester even after they receive international notoriety.

Today, the U.N.’s special rapporteur on the right to adequate housing will do something only one sitting U.S. president ever has done: Visit the sprawling and impoverished Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota. Rapporteur Raquel Rolnik (a rapporteur is someone assigned to make an investigation and report back to an organization) is visiting as part of a tour of some of America’s worst housing, from New York and Los Angeles to post-Katrina New Orleans to the slums of Chicago to Pine Ridge.

Pine Ridge, an 11,000-square-mile reservation of almost 20,000 people, stands tantalizingly within sight of the rich Black Hills. Torturously may be a more apt word: The Black Hills, according to a 1980 Supreme Court ruling, were stolen from the Lakota Sioux tribes now confined to the arid plains beside their old homeland.

Plenty of sordid history needs to be remembered in any discussion of the U.S. government and its treatment of Indians in general and of the Sioux in particular. But recent changes in international law and U.N. priorities have combined to put the old painful story in a new, awkward focus that may finally force Washington to live up to some of the promises made when the government signed treaties with the tribes, and when it would say anything (or shoot anyone) to appropriate tribal lands.

First, in 2000, the U.N. declared that the right to adequate housing is a human right. Then, in 2007, after 20 years of debate and negotiation, it approved a Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples protecting the rights of tribal peoples around the world and stating that treaties between any nation and its native peoples may be considered matters of “international concern” and responsibility.

(Only four countries voted against adoption of the U.N. declaration. One of them, quite disgracefully, was the United States.)

One of the promises made to the Lakota after the end of Red Cloud’s War was a promise to give each family a “comfortable house” (another was to give them the Black Hills “as long as the grass grows” or, it turned out, until someone found gold there). Today, on Pine Ridge, which is located in a county that consistently ranks as the first- or second-poorest in the United States, there aren’t many comfortable houses.

Instead, as in most hard-core pockets of poverty, there are shabby, overcrowded, pest-ridden, dilapidated homes, many of which lack adequate plumbing or other modern conveniences. The shortcomings range from partial kitchens to dirt floors to no telephones. The U.N.’s Rolnik will see it all today, starting her Pine Ridge tour in Wanbli (“eagle” in the Lakota tongue) and visiting several other impoverished settlements, such as Kyle and Porcupine. I am familiar with the Pine Ridge Reservation, having written extensively about it and having stayed as a guest in a small shack without plumbing or running water, and having helped a church group put fresh paint on the isolated trailer homes of tribal elders who kept tires on the roofs to help hold them on.

Bill Clinton is the only president to have visited Pine Ridge, which includes the hamlet of Wounded Knee, where the 7th Cavalry ended the Indian wars by massacring hundreds of Sioux in 1890. Clinton made many promises during his 1999 stop, many of them about improving jobs and housing. A decade later, nothing has changed, except for the worse: Unemployment is estimated at as high as 75 or 80 percent, and 60 percent of the housing stock is considered substandard.

According to a tribal housing report submitted to the U.N. rapporteur, reservation housing is “in a deplorable state,” with most of the government-built homes “severely overcrowded.” As many as 20 or 25 people may live in a three-bedroom home with missing windows, broken walls, mold and other health-menacing problems. On top of everything else, the reservation homelessness rate is estimated at an astounding 30 percent. If you believe the U.N. should concentrate on problems in Third World countries, calm down: Pine Ridge fits right in.

“We hope the rapporteur’s visit will expose the atrocious conditions on the reservation that the U.S. government allows to happen,” says Bill Means, a Pine Ridge native who serves on the board of the International Indian Treaty Council. “The reason for asking the U.N. to help is that we can’t get that type of attention in Washington, especially with the new administration.

“We are looking for policy change. Real change. Not just more promises.”

Nick Coleman is a senior fellow at the Eugene J. McCarthy Center for Public Policy & Civic Engagement at the College of St. Benedict/St. John’s University. He can be reached at nickcoleman@gmail.com

Pine Ridge: A housing issue

Artigo publicado no Indian Country Today sobre visita à reserva indígena de Pine Ridge. Fotos neste link.

By Victoria Bomberry

PINE RIDGE, S.D. – The United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Adequate Housing Raquel Rolnik visited Pine Ridge Nov. 2 to investigate the housing conditions on the reservation.

Located in the poorest county in the United States, Pine Ridge provided Rolnik the opportunity to view housing conditions that reflect the problems present in Indian country throughout the United States. Pine Ridge is the only rural location on her tour of the United States. While Rolnik is responding to the nation-wide housing crisis, inadequate housing is a serious problem that plagues Indian communities in both rural and urban areas.

The UN Commission on Human Rights created the special rapporteur on the right to adequate housing in 2000 to examine and report on housing conditions in various countries.

Rolnik is making site visits at the invitation of the United States. “The United States has been implementing a variety of programs and policies towards providing adequate housing for everyone. I want to look at their functioning and impact from a human rights perspective.” The Universal Declaration of Human Rights affirms that everyone has the right to housing.

“Pine Ridge is a case example of the extreme need that is out there,” said Mellor Willie, National American Indian Housing Council director. “They have a great leadership that is focused on working on housing issues. They are so remote and rural that they reflect the reality of rural Indian communities.”

During the daylong visit, Rolnik met with tribal officials and members to gather oral and written testimony.

The opening ceremonies took place at Oglala Lakota College where community members representing the diversity of the tribe welcomed her. She was received and honored by tribal President Theresa Two Bulls and Oglala Lakota College President Tom Short Bull. During the welcoming ceremonies, traditional members of the tribe presented Rolnik with star quilts – a reminder that the Lakota have a distinct living culture.

“We are very thankful that she is doing this,” Two Bulls said. “I’m happy that the United Nations is sending her here. I hope that she can get the United States to listen. We need people to see first hand what our needs are. I hope that interest spreads to hear our story. For too long it has been their story about what we need, not what we say we need.

My slogan when I ran for president was ‘Unity, Understanding and Peace.’ That can only happen if we all come together.”

Tribal members testified that severe overcrowding marks living conditions on the reservation. With an unemployment rate of 80 percent it is difficult for residents to maintain housing. Among the problems are inadequate repairs and mold that is hazardous to health.

A report prepared by the Oglala Sioux Lakota Housing Authority states that “housing built and indirectly maintained by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development is in a deplorable state. The Lakota Nation, among other Indian nations, is a party to treaties with the United States, signed in the mid and late 1800s. Among the United States treaty obligations is the provision of subsistence and housing.”

“We are a sovereign nation built on treaties that the U.S. doesn’t honor,” said Myron Pourier, a tribal council member. “We don’t have the necessities people take for granted. They have nice homes that have running water, bathrooms and a kitchen.

Sixty percent of the housing on the reservation has three to four families living in a single house, including children and extended family members. We are severely underfunded.”

Willie stressed that the housing problems facing Indian nations are much more complicated than those of other populations in the United States. “It is estimated that 200,000 housing units are needed in Indian country. Currently 90,000 Native American families are homeless or under-housed. The president’s budget for housing block grants is $646 million, but $854 million is needed just to meet the backlog.”

Bill Means, of the International Indian Treaty Council and one of the hosts of the visit said, “Ms. Rolnik went into homes that are public and private housing. She saw the trailers and cluster housing. The reservation is 90 miles by 60 miles so she was able to get a good idea of the problems that exist here.”

On Nov. 7, Rolnik will brief tribal leaders in Washington, D.C. on her findings. Many leaders who are meeting with President Barrack Obama will extend their stay in Washington for the briefing.

Rolnik said many people in the world see the United States as a rich country that does not have a problem with housing. “It is important for the world to know about the housing conditions that exist. It is a question of economic resources.”

Fotos da visita à reserva indígena de Pine Ridge, em Dakota do Sul

UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Adequate Housing, Raquel Rolnik, visit to the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota on November 1st during her official visit to the United States where she is focusing on the human right to housing. Pine Ridge was her only scheduled visit to an Indian reservation. Photos courtesy of Alyssa Macy.

Veja o slideshow aqui.

Visite também o blog não-oficial da missão aos EUA.

Instituto Pólis convida para oficina prática sobre implementação de planos diretores participativos

O Instituto Pólis promove na semana que vem, nos dias 5 e 6 de novembro,  uma oficina prática sobre implementação de Planos Diretores Participativos.

Serão apresentados os resultados da Avaliação de Planos Diretores Participativos no Estado de São Paulo e haverá intercâmbio de experiências práticas dos municípios, com ênfase nas articulações com o Sistema Nacional de Habitação, o Programa Minha Casa, Minha Vida e as leis orçamentárias municipais.

A presença de gestores, técnicos envolvidos com planejamento e habitação e movimentos sociais é bem-vinda.

Inscrições gratuitas pelo email escoladacidadania@polis.org.br ou telefone (11) 2174-6805, com Renato, das 14h às 18h.

Veja o convite.

Todo ser humano tem direito a um lar

Vídeo da coletiva de imprensa concedida na sede da ONU em NY na sexta, 23.

Enquanto todos estão discutindo ativamente a relação entre a crise financeira global e a redução do crédito, ninguém fala sobre o impacto da crise financeira no direito à moradia adequada.

As políticas de moradia foram construídas como iniciativas de bem-estar social na Europa e nos Estados Unidos. Porém, com a inversão desta política, pela primeira vez em um século pode-se observar a formação de favelas, a maioria habitada por imigrantes, nas periferias de cidades como Madri.

O primeiro passo foi reconhecer que existe um problema de moradia. Daqui para frente, serão necessárias políticas públicas para garantir que uma pessoa sem recursos tenha garantido seu direito à moradia digna. Vídeo completo disponível aqui.

UN housing expert talks to Hurricane Katrina survivors

Reportagem publicada na United Nations Radio.

By Jocelyne Sambira

Former residents of New Orleans and survivors of the 2005 Hurricane Katrina met with UN Housing Expert, Raquel Rolnik, on Thursday to share their testimonies and present the problems they face getting adequate housing.

Senior citizens, youth, veterans, immigration advocates came together at the Union Theological Seminary in New York City to meet with Raquel Rolnik who is conducting her first official visit to the United States.

At the town hall meeting, she was given a first hand account of house-related concerns people living in the United States have. She says while many government officials recognize the housing challenges, listening to community residents, she felt a sense of urgency.

“As a person I love the idea of having town hall meetings, that I can hear the people themselves. Here, you feel the radicality. When you talk with technicians, of course all of that it’s a little bit more diluted. But I’m happy to see that these issues that are here, today, I heard also in the meetings with city officials.”

During her two week tour, Ms. Rolnik will also visit Chicago, Pennsylvania, an Indian reservation in Pine Ridge, South Dakota, Los Angeles, New Orleans and Washington, DC.

She will present her formal report on US efforts to protect the right to housing to the UN Human Rights Council next March.

Sound bites

“As a person I love the idea of having town hall meetings, that I can hear the people themselves. Here, you feel the radicality. When you talk with technicians, of course all of that it’s a little bit more diluted. But I’m happy to see that these issues that are here, today, I heard also in the meetings with city officials.”

“Well, the feeling is that we definitely need to have a discussion, open discussion and re-appraisal of housing policies. I think a lot has been done in this country. This country has a history of intervening in housing sector, of building public housing, or intervening in the homelessness sector on innovating programs like rent subsidizing and other schemes. But in a way I think that was stuck in some point now. And I think the way forward need to be discussed.”

U.N. Rapporteur For Housing Visits Tenants Facing Foreclosure In The Bronx

Reportagem publicada no blog The Village Voice.

By Aaron Howell

Right now she’s in New York. Runnin’ Scared caught up with her as she toured The Bronx, where tenants and organizers prepped her on what they described as the newest phenomena of housing woes, “predatory equity.”​ Followers of the Times‘ City Room blog may have seen that the United Nations has dispatched Raquel Rolnik (pictured), its Special Rapporteur for housing issues, to America. She’ll visit various U.S. cities on her trip, including Los Angeles, Chicago, New Orleans.

At an hour-long presentation at the Sedgwick Branch Library on University Avenue and 176th Street — a futuristic 90’s building that looks part space shuttle and part Star Wars, — the rapportuer was told that in a four-square-mile area of the North and South Bronx, six private equity firms have officially driven 2,738 apartment units into foreclosure or risk of foreclosure.

Cesar Guzman, who lives at a building formerly owned by Ocelot Capital Group, said when Ocelot officially “disappeared” — meaning they literally can’t be traced, they “packed up everything and left town” — they also left his 16-unit building in foreclosure and total disrepair, with things to this day “getting worse.”

Other tenants told the the rapporteur similar horror stories. Dina Levy, organizing and policy director for the Urban Homesteading Assistance Board, who helped organize the tenants, found one common denominator in all these cases: buildings with over-leveraged mortgages that their rent revenues can’t support.

And when a building is over-leveraged, said Levy, the landlord inevitably fails to maintain it. “The landlords have these outrageous mortgage payments,” she said. “And they either have two choices: they can pay the mortgage, or they can fix the building.”

Every single building holding the 2,738 endangered or foreclosed units saw a dramatic increase in violations, going from a handful to over 200 in less than a year. For Guzman and many others, this meant no heat and no hot water last winter. (He told us he took a cold shower this morning because the boiler broke down — again.)

Before leaving the prep talk for her tour of a few of the foreclosed buildings, the rapporteur said she’d file reports with the City, the U.S. government and the U.N. But, she added, “I am glad to see that you tenants have organized. Nothing can ever replace people’s organizing. Without pushing from below and taking direct action, nothing ever changes.”

UN to look at U.S. housing conditions

Entrevista concedida à rádio Marketplace de Nova York, neste link. Para ouvir clique aqui.

BILL RADKE: A special envoy from the UN Commission on Human Rights is touring the United States this week and next to review housing conditions here. This is the first time a UN fact-finding mission has come to this country. From Washington, John Dimsdale tells us what the UN is looking for.

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JOHN DIMSDALE: As the UN’s advocate for adequate housing, Raquel Rolnik is visiting seven U.S. cities — looking at foreclosure rates and the availability of low-income shelters. Usually UN housing rights advocates are in countries like Romania or Cambodia. But Rolnik says the housing crisis in the U.S. bears closer scrutiny.

RAQUEL ROLNIK: Because of the specific link between the financial crisis and the issue of housing and especially housing for low-income people, a great interest raised to the situation of the United States.

The UN Commission for Human Rights did not send her to investigate specific violations of housing policies.

ROLNIK: But indeed I have received complaints on the demolition of public housing and the situation of the people that became homeless or live in a precarious situation.

She’ll deliver a report on U.S. housing conditions in the spring — before her next investigation in either Laos or Indonesia.

In Washington I’m John Dimsdale for Marketplace.

Exclusive: U.N. Special Rapporteur on Adequate Housing Speaks with the Indypendent

Entrevista publicada no The Indypendent neste link.

Last night, the United Nations’ Special Rapporteur on Adequate Housing, Raquel Rolnick, kicked off her nationwide tour by hosting a town hall meeting with New Yorkers affected by the housing crisis.

To read more about the town hall meeting, click here.

Rolnick is a Brazilian architect and urban planner, and a professor at the University of Sao Paolo.  She is also the former Director of the Department of Planning for Sao Paolo, and from 2003-2007 served as the National Secretary for Urban Programs of the Brazilian Ministry of Cities.

After the event, I caught up with Rolnick for an exclusive interview about the housing crisis in the United States, the economic recession, and the Obama administration.

Alex Kane:  Explain the purpose of your trip.

Raquel Rolnick:  This is an official mission of the Special Rapporteur on the right to adequate housing.  The Rapporteur on the right to adequate housing was appointed by the U.N. Human Rights Council in order to monitor the implementation of the right to adequate housing in the world.  And in order to do that, the instruments that the Special Rapporteur has as an independent expert, one of the instruments is doing fact-finding trips that we call missions, to different countries, in order to meet both with official government and non-government and community and see what’s going on in the country in this specific topic, the specific right to adequate housing and then report back to the Human Rights Council.

AK:  And when will that report back be?

RR:  I will present the full report next March 2010, in the meeting, in the next Human Rights Council meeting, where I’m supposed to report.  I report there once a year.  But before there, by the end of the meeting, I will do a very, very short, preliminary, two-pages, preliminary report, and I share that with the government, and after that, I issue a press release with key findings or key sentences, and that will be by the end of the mission, that will be on November 8.

AK:  What do you think the Obama administration should do to combat the housing crisis?

RR:  Well, I think one of the hopes that we have with the Obama administration is to face the basis, original basis, of the financial crisis, which is the failure of housing policies to address the issue of housing, and the radical shift from taking housing as a social issue into housing as a commodity and a financial asset, opening ground to sub-prime, and the whole thing in terms of predatory lending that came after that.  So I think it’s very important to do an evaluation of all that and retaking the path the United States had in the past, from the 30s and up to the 80s, taking housing as a human right.  And I hope the Obama administration will do that, but of course, the agenda for this government is huge.  Housing is one of the issues, but there are of course many others.

AK:  How has the global economic crisis exacerbated the housing crisis here?

RR:  Well, of course the fact that when you have economic crises, you have unemployment, you have increasing poverty, and that immediately exacerbates the housing crisis because more people cannot pay their rent anymore, more people cannot pay their mortgage anymore, and this is a vicious cycle.  So, of course the economic crisis, one of the aspects of the economic crisis, is exactly the housing crisis.

AK:  What do you think is the best way to hold the U.S. government accountable and to make housing as a human right a priority?

RR:  I think the best way to do that is really thinking out of the box, which means going out of the scheme one-size fits all, like home ownership is the path, the only solution, credit is the only solution, and taking the issue, and the complexity of the issue has, means having housing policies to address the different needs of different groups and different situations.  Combining rent schemes, subsidized rent schemes, with public housing, with other types of community development housing, and other types of schemes.  And of course, putting more priority on that in the government agenda and take that as a responsibility of the state.

AK:  You said earlier you met with members of the City Council and local government.  Who did you meet with exactly, and do you think anything will come out of those meetings?

RR:  Well, the meetings were much more for me to learn.  So, it was basically a meeting where I asked about the numbers, about the situation, about the structure, about how it functions, and how it works, what has been discussed.  So, I don’t expect any immediate outcome from this meeting.  The meetings, like today, were to inform me, basically, but now it’s there.

AK:  Did you meet with Mayor Bloomberg?

RR:  No, unfortunately.  I asked to meet him, I would love to meet Mayor Bloomberg, and I asked to meet him and all the mayors in the trip, but unfortunately I didn’t get a positive answer.

AK:  Last question:  What’s your final message to get out to everyone?

RR:  First, which is not so clear to everyone, adequate housing is a human right.  Second, today, now, it’s time to go forward, to implement that.  I think that few countries in the world have the conditions to do that.  And U.S. is one of them.

U.N. Housing Rapporteur Kicks Off U.S. Tour in New York City

Publicado no site The Indypendent neste link.

By Alex Kane

Public housing residents, victims of foreclosure, and homeless people gave testimony on New York City’s housing crisis Oct. 22 at a town hall meeting with the United Nations’ Special Rapporteur on Adequate Housing, Raquel Rolnick.

In what was often disturbing and emotional three-minute testimonies, New Yorkers shared stories of unscrupulous landlords, predatory equity firms, and a broken homeless shelter system with the Special Rapporteur, a Brazilian urban planner and architect.

“It’s time for America to look in the mirror and realize how land is a significant factor in the class struggle,” said Rob Robinson, the New York City chair for the U.N. visit and a housing organizer withPicture the Homeless.  “It’s time for America to abide by the Articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.  After all, housing is a human right.”

The town hall meeting, held at the Union Theological Seminary in Morningside Heights, kicked off Rolnick’s nationwide tour that will bring her from the rural community of Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, where the foreclosure crisis has hit hard, to New Orleans, Louisiana, where public housing has been demolished and privatized.  Her visit marks the first time a U.N. Special Rapporteur on Housing has visited the U.S.

In New York over the next two days, Rolnick will be visiting homes in foreclosure and public housing sites in Queens, the Bronx and Upper Manhattan, where she will be hosted by grassroots organizations.

The site visit to New York comes as the economic recession has only exacerbated the homeless and affordable housing crises in the city.  The homeless shelter population is at its highest level since the Great Depression, while the shortage of public housing continues to plague the area, with about 130,000 families on the waiting list for public housing.

Across the country, unemployment, poverty and homelessness continue to rise.

“I see this mission as an opportunity to open a dialogue, to open a movement, towards the achievement and implementation of the right to adequate housing,” said Rolnick, who was appointed to her post in May 2008 by the United Nations Human Rights Council.  “We know very well that changes will come only if people organize.”

Before the town hall meeting, Rolnick met with members of the New York City Council, and while in Washington, D.C., will meet with Housing and Urban Development and Obama administration officials.  The National Economic and Social Rights Initiative and the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty are coordinating the U.S. State Department approved trip around the country.

The New York City visit is being sponsored by a wide range of grassroots organizations from the five boroughs, including Good Old Lower East Side, the Coalition to Save Harlem, Mothers on the Move, and Organizing Asian Communities.

Cynthia Butts, a New York City Housing Authority resident in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, shared her story with Rolnick.  “If you come to Brooklyn, I will take you personally on a tour of Fort Greene.  I will explain to you the history of Fort Greene, and I will also show you the damage of Fort Greene,” said Butts, a member of Families United for Racial and Economic Equality.  “We have been displaced, we have been relocated…There are still empty, vacant apartments.  So who are you holding these apartments for?”  Fort Greene, like other neighborhoods in Brooklyn, has experienced a wave of gentrification in recent years.

At least 25 people testified in front of the Rapporteur, who will use the testimony, as well as information from site visits, to present a report to the U.S. government and the Human Rights Council next March.

“I am disgusted by the disinvestment [in public housing].  State, federal, where’s the money?” said Nova Strachan, a resident of Claremont Consolidated, a public housing site in the Bronx, and a Housing Justice staffer with Mothers on the Move.  “You know, you bailed out Wall Street, bail out the people.”

Brenda Stokely of the New York Solidarity Coalition for Katrina/Rita Survivors urged the audience to use the meeting and testimonies to build a housing justice movement.

“This is not the end, brothers and sisters.  This is just another beginning for how to build our movement,” she said.

Deu no New York Times: Moradia acessível? ONU envia olhar crítico para a habitação em Nova York

Reportagem publicada nesta sexta, 23, disponível neste link.

Michael Premo
Raquel Rolnik, United Nations special rapporteur, meets New Yorkers at a town hall meeting on Thursday.

Affordable? U.N. Puts a Questioning Eye on New York’s Housing

By Mike Reicher

Everybody knows New York City is an expensive place to live. But the United Nations wants to know if affordable housing is so tough to come by that it actually violates human rights.

The United Nations has assigned an official, “a special rapporteur on the right to adequate housing,” to check the city’s affordable housing. The rapporteur, Raquel Rolnik, is to tour the city for the next three days with housing advocates and city officials to “hear the voices of those who are suffering on the ground,” she said.

The United Nations Human Rights Council appoints a rapporteur, or independent experts, to investigate human rights conditions around the world. In the case of Ms. Rolnik, a professor of urban planning at the University of Sao Paulo in Brazil, her “mission” is to tour New York City and six other places in the United States and to report back to the United Nations General Assembly about housing rights violations and advances.

After that, “We send off letters to governments to ask, ‘Is this true? What’s going on?’ and to please intervene,” she said.

Housing advocates will be taking Ms. Rolnik to the Atlantic Yards site in Brooklyn to see the results of the government’s use of eminent domain to seize property; to the New York City Housing Authority’s Grant Houses in Harlem to see how public housing residents live; and to the Bronx to meet residents whose landlords are in foreclosure.

At a town hall meeting last night in Morningside Heights, residents wept and shouted at Ms. Rolnik. They complained about deteriorating public housing, the lack of housing subsidies for AIDS patients, landlord harassment and many other issues, large and small.

She told them: “I am representing the right of adequate housing as a human right.”

One advocate and resident of public housing, Agnes Rivera, wept after telling Ms. Rolnik that Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg “doesn’t care about the poor.” Rob Robinson from Picture the Homeless, a local advocacy group, embraced Ms. Rivera and gazed toward the special rapporteur. Later, Ms. Rolnik hugged a resident herself.

“Affordable housing here is not that affordable,” said Ms. Rolnik, who studied urban history as a New York University doctoral student in the 1980s. Her eyes lit up when talking about inclusionary zoning and other city housing policies. New York is unusual, she pointed out, because it has a city-level obligation to ensure that homeless people have shelter. Now it should make affordable housing a priority, she said.

Ms. Rolnik was appointed as special rapporteur by the United Nations Human Rights Council in May 2008. This is her first official mission.

After her tour of New York City, she will survey the housing situations in Chicago, New Orleans, Los Angeles, Washington, a South Dakota Indian reservation, and Wilkes-Barre, Pa. Her report to the General Assembly is planned for March.

Across the United States, residents may tell her the same stories as those of New Yorkers — of mortgage scams, too many luxury condos and the stigma associated with public housing.

“We have no one to help us,” said Delores Earley, 73, who said her landlord has been trying to push her out of her Harlem rent-stabilized apartment for 20 years. “Somebody has got to know.”

Tratados sobre mudanças climáticas devem incluir proteção à moradia dos mais pobres

Press-release divulgado nesta sexta, 23.

“O debate internacional sobre mudanças climática tem se baseado, até o momento, na precificação de bens e danos, promovendo o comércio de créditos de carbono, a produção de bens carbon-free e inovações tecnológicas. Falta trazer para o centro deste debate propostas concretas que protejam os mais afetados pelos desastres relacionados às mudanças climáticas: os mais pobres, que vivem em assentamentos precários”, afirmou a relatora especial da ONU para o direito à moradia adequada, Raquel Rolnik, em declaração divulgada nesta sexta-feira, 23, em Nova York.

Rolnik explica que nas cidades há uma “coincidência perversa” entre a localização de assentamentos irregulares e as áreas mais expostas aos desastres ambientais agravados pelas mudanças climáticas. Tais assentamentos ficam, em geral, em áreas de encostas ou várzeas inundáveis – espaços não aproveitados pelo mercado que acabaram destinados aos mais pobres. “Essa população não têm recursos para contratar seguros nem para se mudar para outros lugares”, diz Rolnik.

Para a relatora, os países menos desenvolvidos e os Estados em pequenas ilhas estão especialmente vulneráveis. E, mesmo nos países ricos e em desenvolvimento, quem sofrerá as piores consequências são as pessoas carentes de recursos.

“Os países devem investir prioritariamente nos assentamentos irregulares, para consolidar e urbanizar essas áreas e torná-las mais resistentes aos desastres relacionados às mudanças climáticas. Essa população tem o direito de ser protegida pelo poder público, sem que isso signifique a destruição de sua forma de vida e organização social”, afirma Rolnik.

Quando a urbanização não for possível e a remoção se mostrar indispensável, a relatora reitera que os países devem observar diretrizes mínimas, como tratar as pessoas com dignidade, resguardar o direito de defesa, oferecer alternativas definitivas de moradia e permitir a participação nas decisões.

Rolnik lembra que os efeitos das mudanças climáticas são distribuídos desproporcionalmente, já que as nações e as pessoas mais pobres, que contribuem menos para a emissão de gás carbônico, são os mais afetados pelos impactos do aquecimento global. “As normas internacionais de direitos humanos afirmam a necessidade de cooperação internacional para evitar que encargos desiguais recaiam sob os que estão menos preparados para suportá-los”, destaca a relatora.