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News
Street Roots • March 9-15, 2018
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U N Special Rapporteur on Adequate H ousing offers a worldly perspective
after witnessing the abject poverty in the wealthiest nation in the world
BY ASHLEY ARCHIBALD
C O N T R IB U T IN G W R IT E R
eilani Farha doesn’t want to live in a
world where people have to negotiate
to use the bathroom.
She doesn’t want to live in a world where
residents in the United States, the richest
country on the planet, live in encampments
infested with rats. Farha doesn’t want to live
in a world where people are discriminated
against to the point where simply standing
still on a sidewalk can make them subject to
citations or arrest.
And she certainly doesn’t want to live in a
world where people are not afforded basic
dignities.
And so, Farha works to change it.
The United Nations Special Rapporteur
on Adequate Housing fights so that people
around the world can access housing that is
culturally appropriate, secure from eviction
and proximate to the things that are
important — jobs, health care and education.
She’s independent of any state or superstate
actor; though she works with the U .N .,
Farha does not work for them.
Special rapporteurs are independent
experts appointed by the Human Rights
Council to monitor specific rights. Farha is
also the executive director of Canada
Without Poverty, a charitable organization
based in Ottawa, Canada. For the past 20
years, Farha has worked both internationally
and domestically on the implementation of
the right to adequate housing for the most
L
population for whom those few belongings
that they had may look like junk and trash to
someone else, but to that population they’re
their life’s belongings. It’s cruel. There was
a cruelty.
I could go on and on. I read a statistic
yesterday that one in six arrests in Los
Angeles - 1 in 6 arrests - is of a homeless
person. I mean, I’m sorry, why is that? Is
that because homeless people are really
committing all of these crimes, or is that
because homeless people are perceived as
criminals? Is it because so many of the
bylaws and laws are focused on the act of
people who are homeless?
A .A .: Are there places you can think o f
where the state has successfully protected
people's rights?
marginalized groups.
Her current project, a report on informal
settlements, has taken her around the
Global South seeking out slums and barrios.
But it also brought her to California to meet
people living in tent cities experiencing
homelessness just blocks from a magnet for
global wealth and finance.
The sights and stories of extreme poverty
in the United States weighed heavily on
Farha, who had this to say to the
government that allows its residents’
international human rights to be violated so
egregiously.
“I’m sorry. If I were in government in
America, I would be completely ashamed,
completely ashamed of what I have in some
way, shape or form contributed to,” Farha
said.
A s h le y A r c h ib a ld : You were on the
ground in San Francisco and L os Angeles.
What did you see in those two cities, an d how
did that affect you?
L e ila n i F a r h a : I have been profoundly
affected by my visit to California. What I saw
was very, very difficult to see, especially in
the context of the wealth of that state and
the wealth of the country. What did I see:
people living in tents under bridges, by
railway tracks, sandwiched behind highways,
no sanitation, no toilets. Many without even
a (portable toilet).
I was walking along a street in San
Francisco in an underpass, and I saw there
was excrement on the sidewalk. I have a
dog, so originally I was like, OK, there’s a
lot of dog poo around. And then I realized,
looking at it slightly more closely, this is not
animal excrement. And then it dawned on
me. Of course, it was human excrement,
because there were encampments in and
around where I was walking and there were
no toilets. What were people going to do?
There was one place in East Oakland, in
fact an encampment that the city has agreed
that the people can at least stay at that land,
that was the one sandwiched between two
kind of highways like these railway tracks.
Every 30 seconds you had to stop your
conversation as a train went by. As I was
being interviewed by a journalist on the
ground there, we watched this huge rat just
sort of walk by us, and people had been
saying that there are at least five rats a day
that they were having to kill. There’s no
garbage collection at any of these
communities, basically, and that’s a vicious
circle — oh, God, those homeless people are
just like garbage, they’re just like putting
their garbage everywhere. Well, they don’t
have anywhere to put their garbage. So,
right, it creates this vicious, stereotyping
circle.
I heard very sad stories of people’s
belongings being completely trashed by law
enforcement, or supposedly kept but all
dumped into one dumpster and everyone’s
stuff co-mingling and getting wet. This is a
L .F .: Worldwide, every state has
homelessness. So, in that way, all states
have not fulfilled the right to adequate
housing for all of their people.
Homelessness is considered an egregious
violation of human rights, including the
right to adequate housing. And there is
actually an immediate obligation on states to
end or eliminate homelessness.
In terms of states that are performing
well, I mean, you know there are states that
might be on the better side of things.
Finland, for example, is a pretty leading
example worldwide of a state that has taken
seriously the issue of homelessness and is
trying to address it. It was the only
European state - 1 think in 2016 or 2017 -
anyway, in a one-year period, the only state
in Europe that has decreased homelessness.
In every other state homelessness has
increased. It shows they are doing
something right.
A .A .: Are there effective governm ent
regulations that can intervene in the U .S.
housing market at this p o in t?
L .F .: Singapore taxes all foreign
investment at something like 18 percent.
New Zealand has prohibited foreign
investment — you can do the analysis of
whether that s a good thing or not.
China has regulations around taxing for
See FARHA, page 11