Respect Human Rights: Stop the Demolitions!

For Immediate Release: November 13, 2007 at 12:00 Noon

1 The Minnesota-New Orleans Solidarity Organizing Committee is an ad-hoc group of housing and human rights advocates in Minnesota. The Solidarity Rally is endorsed by the New Orleans Public Housing and Right of Return Movement, United Front for Affordable Housing, Minnesota Tenants Union, Minnesota Tenants Alliance, MPIRG, St. Stephens Shelter, University of Minnesota Human Rights Center, Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions, Minnesota Chapter of the National Lawyers Guild, Minnesota ACORN, Northside Neighbors for Justice, Maria Inamagua Campaign for Justice, Minnesota Homeless Coalition, and the Poor Peoples Economic Human Rights Campaign.

Low income housing advocates and human rights activists in Minnesota gathered today in a Solidarity Rally for New Orleans tenants who are facing the loss of their housing to HUD’s demolition and gentrification plans. The site of the Solidarity Rally was a bridge spanning the Mississippi River, America’s River, the river which symbolically unites hard-pressed tenants and their threatened housing from one end of the country to the other, from Minnesota to Louisiana and all points in between.

Low income housing advocates and human rights activists in Minnesota rallied to condemn HUD plans to demolish 5,000 viable and much needed public housing units in New Orleans and called for an immediate halt to HUD’s demolition plans The impetus for the Rally date was a call for support from New Orleans Public Housing and Right to Return Movement and the United Front for Affordable Housing , which are holding a large Rally in New Orleans today at 4PM.

At their noonday Solidarity Rally, Minnesotans active for low-income housing rights and human rights recalled that Minnesota is no stranger to large-scale tax-propelled government clearance of large numbers of low income and minority residences to make way for gentrified communities, scattering existing communities of color in their wake: see, for example the highway development that routed the Rondo Community in St. Paul and the Holman “Development” in North Minneapolis that demolished nearly 1,000 units of low income public housing, displacing and dispersing thousands of low-income residents of color.

In a letter to Rep. Maxine Waters (D-California) chief sponsor of the Gulf Coast Hurricane Housing Recovery Act of 2007 that has passed the House but is bottled up at the committee level in the Senate (S.F.1668), New Orleans tenants and their supporters write:

Public Housing residents in New Orleans find themselves caught in the grip of two unyielding government authorities: the Housing Authority of New Orleans (HANO) and the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). . . . Actions taken by both organizations have made it difficult to survivors to move past the tragedy of the storms to rebuild their lives. Because measures taken by HANO and HUD primarily impact Black and poor residents, they inevitably appear to have an undercurrent of racial and economic discrimination and exclusion.

The public housing crisis is unfolding within a broader human right to housing crisis. For example, the Greater New Orleans Fair Housing Action Center has documented widespread discrimination in the city’s rental markets and nearby White suburban communities have reportedly passed anti-subsidized housing legislation to ensure that Black and poor families do not settle in their neighborhoods. When added to this is HUD’s inexplicable shortening of the normally 100-day demolition review process to one day, in order to expedite the destruction of the few existing public housing units, poor people have literally nowhere to turn. This violent push to demolish the public housing units represents an extreme manifestation of policies and approaches to rebuilding New Orleans that appear to purge Black and or communities almost by design.

Under human rights standards, governments must provide those who have been internally

displaced by events such as natural disasters specific safeguards with respect to housing. Article 28(1) of the United Nations’ Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement , which USAID recognizes when carrying out international development policy states:

Competent authorities 1 have the primary duty and responsibility to establish conditions, as well as provide the means, which allow internally displaced persons to return voluntarily, in safety and with dignity, to their homes or places of habitual residence . . .

In addition, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the foundational instrument of human rights adopted unanimously by all member countries of the United Nations (including the United States) states:

Article 25(1): Everyone has a right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well being of himself and his family, including . . . housing . . .

Further, Article 11(1) of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination , a treaty ratified by the United States 2 in 1994, states:

States Parties undertake to prohibit and to eliminate racial discrimination in all its forms and to guarantee to right of everyone, . . . to equality before the law, notably in the enjoyment of . . . the right to housing.

In 1949, the United States government pledged to realize as soon as feasible

. . . The goal of a decent home and a suitable living environment for every American family, thus contributing to the development and redevelopment of communities and to the advancement of the growth, wealth, and security of the nation.

Despite that commendable goal, in recent years the sight of government bull dozers and wrecking balls poised to demolish public housing for the poor is not unique to New Orleans. Indeed regression from the goal of adequate, affordable housing for all seems epidemic in the United States. For example, the Housing Authority of New York City is reported to be in financial disarray and remains vulnerable to private control, with an inevitable increase in rents and displacement of low income tenants. Under the HOPE VI program, HUD has demolished far more housing units than they have thus far replaced. The over 13,000 demolished units in Chicago have forced approximately 20,000 residents from their homes and has thus left tens of thousands on an indefinite waiting list. Throughout the United States housing is becoming acutely unaffordable with the resulting housing crisis increasing homelessness.

The New Orleans Solidarity Organizing Committee - Minnesota Branch unites with the New Orleans Public Housing and Right to Return Movement and the United Front for Affordable Housing to demand a halt to HUD’s plans to demolish approximately 5,000 units of badly needed and structurally sound public housing. HUD‘s planned demolition of this valuable housing resource would exacerbate the suffering of low income New Orleans tenants and effectively block their return to New Orleans, in violation of human rights standards, commitments, and common decency as shared by all peoples of the world. HUD should turn its energies to housing people in need and facilitating the return of New Orleans low income residents rather than demolishing their homes and blocking their return.

For further information, contact Peter Brown 612-824-6533 / peterb3121@hotmail.com .

For information on public housing demolitions under HOPE VI: Professor Edward Goetz, Hubert Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs, 612-624-8737 and egoetz@hhh.umn.edu .

1 In light of this Administration’s record in the years following the Katrina Disaster, some will understandably shudder at having to declare HUD and the Bush Administration “competent authorities” under these provisions, However, the term is a word of art, which necessarily refers to the Bush Administration and HUD in this case, since they have the authority to comply with the Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement .

2 Under the US Constitution, treaties ratified by the United States become part of the “supreme law of the land.” See Article VI, Section 2 of the United States Constitution. By ratifying the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, therefore, the United States has made its obligation under the treaty part of the supreme law of the land.