By Robbie Clark–
Following is one of the articles appearing in our newest edition of Just Causes/Spring-Summer 2013. In it, Robbie Clark, our Housing Rights Campaign Lead Organizer outlines the Homes for All campaign and how YOU can get involved. Our newspaper will be up on our website shortly.
Causa Justa :: Just Cause is a core member of the Right to the City Alliance that is leading the call for Homes for All. This national campaign aims to unite various housing sectors with the goals of protecting the homes that people already have, expanding affordable housing and creating new forms of community controlled housing.
To protect the homes that people have, we are making local demands for eviction protections, healthy and habitable public and private rental properties, and principle reductions on loan modifications for homeowners in foreclosure.
“There are many people who want to evict us from our homes. We have to fight back to win our demands,” states Margarita Ramirez, Causa Justa :: Just Cause leader and mother fighting to get her family’s home back from investors who purchased her home in 2012, “Everyone having a home means more security overall, for the whole community.”
“There isn’t one state in the entire country where a full time minimum wage worker can afford the fair market value to rent a 2-bedroom apartment. In California, you have to work 129 hours per week at minimum wage to afford market-rate rent.”
— Out of Reach report, 2013, The National Housing Trust Fund
Another goal of the campaign is to expand affordable housing. This work includes passing policies like rent control in cities and states across the country that don’t have these protections, increasing access to affordable housing and fighting to secure funding to build new affordable housing.
In Oakland and San Francisco, we have rent control, but it’s a struggle to protect rent-controlled properties. CJJC member Ana Gutierrez has lived in her rent-controlled mission apartment for 34 years and raised five sons there. In 2010, a new owner purchased the building and is using a law called the Ellis Act to evict all of the families. The landlord told Mrs. Gutierrez, “In one year, I’ll get back the money I lost trying to get you out.”
Photo: Josh Warren White
Ellis Act Loophole
The Ellis Act allows landlords to evict tenants when they are changing the use of the building. In this case, the new landlord will profit from turning the apartment building into a luxury housing building and selling the units as condos to people with much higher incomes.
CJJC is working with allies to develop state legislation that will stop this attack on existing rent-controlled properties and through our national alliance, Right to the City, we are teaming up with other national organizations to develop proactive solutions to the housing crisis.
One opportunity is the National Housing Trust Fund, a trust dedicated to the development of housing for people at low incomes. The National Housing Trust Fund was put into place by a policy passed by the National Low Income Housing Coalition (NLIHC) in 2008.
The NLIHC is an official partner in the Homes for All Campaign and works on policies and research on affordable housing throughout the nation. In the 2013 version of their Out of Reach report, they found that there isn’t one state in the entire country where a full time minimum wage worker can afford the fair market value to rent a 2-bedroom apartment. In California, you have to work 129 hours per week at minimum wage to afford market-rate rent.
A major demand for the campaign is for the federal government to prioritize funding housing. We are looking to the Obama administration and HUD to find the money to rehabilitate the more than 100,000 units of vacant public housing that is in disrepair. We are also demanding that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac invest money into the National Housing Trust Fund and that they transfer 100,000 homes that the have taken from our communities through foreclosure back to community groups and non-profits to create affordable housing. 
Affordable Housing
Access to affordable housing is also a critical part of the Homes for All campaign. “People should be allowed to get second chance vouchers when they lose their section 8 certification,” states CJJC leader Redana Johnson, “If I had been able to get a second chance voucher, I wouldn’t have had such a hard time finding housing that I could afford. Housing is a human right, certifications and requirements shouldn’t keep people from meeting their basic needs.”
Part of the problem that the Homes for All campaign is addressing is the fact that there is just not enough affordable housing to meet the demand. Barriers to accessing affordable housing like felony and citizenship status force people to live in unhealthy conditions and at worst into the streets.
Over time, it’s our final goal to create long term affordable housing that is controlled by the community and is for all people regardless of income, citizenship status, or background. It is our right to have a secure, healthy and affordable place to live.
To win the call for Homes for All, it will take the voices and the power of the entire community to make the federal government realize it’s role and responsibility in making sure that the human right to housing is full filled.
Take the pledge and join the call…Homes for All!