Others followed, recounting in English or Spanish, sometimes Korean, their personal crises. Some shouted their anger, others laboriously recounted details of losing homes, families forced into overcrowded shelters, life on the streets.
The United Nations special rapporteur, Raquel Rolnik, listened to it all patiently, occasionally taking notes, nodding encouragement.
Rolnik had waited more than a year to tour cities across the US to prepare a report for the UN’s human rights council on America’s deepening housing crisis following the subprime mortgage debacle.
UN special rapporteurs are more often found investigating human rights in Sudan and Burundi or abuses of the Israeli occupation than exposing the underbelly of the American dream. George Bush’s administration blocked her visit, finding itself in the company of Cuba, Burma and North Korea in blocking a special rapporteur.
“I was asking for almost a year before I as allowed in,” Rolnik said.
When Barack Obama came to power she was welcomed to range across America talking to those who have lived on the streets for years and the newly homeless forced out by the foreclosure crisis.
Rolnik, a Brazilian urban planner and architect, said administration officials were genuinely interested in what she might find, if not embracing of her raison d’etre that everyone is entitled to a decent home.
“One of the first meetings I had at the state department they clearly told me: here, adequate housing is not a human right,” she said.
“I was shocked when I realised that the US, and countries in Europe – England – as well, had a solid housing policy for many years that worked pretty well. That was dismantled and the situation became worse throughout the nineties. Then we had this financial crisis and a real crisis in housing. It’s all tied together,” she said.
Her final stop was Los Angeles, the homeless capital of the nation. Up to 100,000 people are sleeping on the streets or in shelters on any given night. Some have been living like that for years. Others found themselves suddenly destitute as the bank seized their home or they lost a job and couldn’t pay the rent.
Two years ago about 1,300 people were evicted from properties in central LA. Last year it was 15,500. Across the wider Los Angeles region 62,400 people were thrown out of their homes.
“There is a predictable path for those who lose their jobs and can’t pay the rent or the mortgage,” Gary Blasi, a University of California law professor, told Rolnik. “First they live with friends and relatives, but they’re poor, too. Then they live in their cars until the cars get towed or break down. Some live in tents. Almost all the camping grounds within 100 miles of Los Angeles are now filled with people living in them.”
Rolnik doesn’t pretend she can change the situation. All she can do, she tells the crowd at the meeting, is to draw their problems to the attention of their government and warn others of the dangers.
“The US has exported an economic model with the idea that everyone can organise themselves under that model. It’s very important for the rest of the world to know who fits in to this model and who is excluded,” she tells her audience.
noting both the yin and yang of futurity, watching cover ups as they happen, fighting back, and wooking pa nub in all de wong places. that's what i do.
************************************
[the Other Outposts]
EuroTrash Utility Belt
EuroTrash Films, Local Bands, Hard To Find Recordings, and secret notebooks.
uncertaintimes liked this
ledgergermane posted this
