LEGAL STUDIES RESEARCH PAPER SERIES Rights as a Functional Guide for Service Provision in Homeless Advocacy (original) (raw)
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SSRN Electronic Journal, 2000
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Homelessness as a violation of human rights – Criminalisation of homelessness – Insufficient international and European protection of the rights of homeless persons – American charters of the rights of homeless persons as a source of inspiration – Model European Homeless Bill of Rights – FEANTSA – Human rights instrument – Positive and negative rights of the homeless person – Right to exit homelessness – Right to carry out practices necessary to survival within the law – Adoption and implementation of the Charter by Human Rights Cities in Spain, Slovenia and Poland – Soft law – Perspectives for the protection of the rights of homeless persons
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This paper is the second part of a two-part research project that considers what the new paradigm of social rights and the re-unified system of human rights mean for the design and implementation of programs and strategies to address poverty and homelessness in Canada. The paper explores the extent to which a domestic constitutional framework exists for a rights-based approach to housing and anti-poverty strategies in Canada, compatible with, and informed by, the international human rights law and jurisprudence. Particular attention is paid to four Canadian constitutional provisions: 1) the commitment to provide public services of reasonable quality to all Canadians, under section 36 of the Constitution Act, 1982; the right to life, liberty, and security of the person, under section 7 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms; the right to equal protection and equal benefit of the law, under section 15 of the Charter; and Canadian governments' obligation, under section 1 of the Charter, to balance and limit rights in a manner that is reasonable and demonstrably justifiable. Funding for this paper was provided by the
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The scale of homelessness in Europe throws a stark light on the right to housing that exists in many European states and in European and International Law. This disparity between legal right and the social reality of homelessness and housing precarity begs the question as to the efficacy of a rights-based approach to housing. This article examines the ‘enforceable’ right to housing in France, in place since 2007, to explore the efficacy of approaching a chronic lack of housing through justiciable rights. The lack of progress in over a decade of jurisprudence highlights the challenges posed to legal advocacy in this area, particularly when combined with a lack of political will. The article concludes by reflecting on alternative approaches, in which justiciable rights have played less of a role, stressing the need for political and financial commitment over legal rights.
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Women in homelessness are among the most marginalized citizens in the modern welfare state and they are thus living indicators of the reach of social rights to basic welfare. In this article, qualitative interviews with women in homelessness in Sweden are used to illustrate the ways in which women in this group are denied their social rights and why. A theoretical understanding based is that social rights are essential for the realization of civil and political rights, but also that they are a first stepping-stone on a path to a more ordered and dignified life for these women. The analysis highlights several ways in which rights are unrealized, including both individual and institutional factors. We conclude that outreach activities and specialized health care services are two important tools for ensuring basic social rights that a fuller citizenship can be built on.
This was a paper written for a Philosophy of Ethics, Political Philosophy and Aesthetic course. The assignment focused on the homeless issues our society faces and whether Liberalism or Conservatism would best address these issues. I argue that homelessness must be tolerated.
Antipode, 2011
In 2001, President Bush announced his intention to "end chronic homeless by the year 2012" as part of his broad "Compassion Agenda". Since then, departmental consolidation, changes in funding allocation, and continued decentralization of services provision have dramatically reshaped the landscape of homeless service provision in the US. In this paper I examine how these roll-out policies reify and re-entrench liberal equations of property with rational self-governance at the local scale. Particularly, I illustrate how tropes of homeless otherness work alongside and through federal neoliberal roll-out policies to exclude homeless voices from the formation of local social policy. In doing so, I attempt to call attention to the mutually constitutive relationship between the spatial management of homeless bodies, tropes of homeless deviance and dependence, and limits to citizenship in the context of neoliberal urban governance.
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Homelessness is a major human rights violation across the globe and within Australia, which I argue should be viewed from a human rights-based approach and addressed with the use of international human rights laws. Being homeless is not a choice, nor is it an identity, it is an experience that impacts on people’s human rights. Across numerous international human rights instruments various aspects of housing rights are protected, which make states that are party to these covenants and conventions legally obliged to respect, fulfill and protect the housing rights found in those instruments. Taking measures to prevent homelessness is included in these obligations, therefore states should work towards the full realization of the right to adequate housing. The expectation to end homelessness is not unrealistic and should be the ultimate goal of the Australian Government. Applying a rights-based approach and viewing homelessness and issues of relevance through a human rights lens this dissertation will critically analyse the definition of homelessness, theories of relevance to homelessness, the causes and extent of homelessness, barriers to adequate housing, homelessness and adequate housing in human rights discourse and instruments, the impact of homelessness on other human rights, misconceptions of the right to adequate housing, and ways to reduce or end homelessness. I argue that homelessness is a major human rights violation and will demonstrate how homelessness can be addressed by using international human rights instruments and laws, while exploring homelessness from a rights-based approach.