Zero Evictions Days 2020

Housing, Health and Human Rights:

Pittsburgh and other cities join the International Alliance of Inhabitants’ Zero Evictions Days (October 2020)-International solidarity to achieve dignity and security in housing.

Housing is Health Care! Why Housing Must Be Treated as a Human Right Together with the CMU Film Festival and other partners, we’re working to advance struggles for housing justice at this moment of acute crisis. Join others in watching the documentary film, Push, which shows how global banks and investment firms are controlling residential housing around the world. More and more renters are vulnerable to absentee landlords who have turned our communities into profitable sources of private investment income. But there’s another story too: residents are coming together to demand that housing be protected as a human right.

• October 24-November 1: Film Screening, Push (online-Link TBA)
• Thursday October 29 7:00pm Webinar: Featuring Leilani Farha—former UN Special Rapporteur on the Human Right to Adequate Housing: Explore the lessons behind the film and the work to build a global housing rights movement. Local housing leaders, including Carl Redwood from Pittsburgh's Hill District Consensus Group offer reactions to the film and its message, discussing how financialization of housing impacts local communities and how the human right to housing movement can fight the global forces pushing people out of their homes and communities.
• Thursday November 5 7:00PM: Online panel and dialogue: Local housing advocates from Pittsburgh and Philadelphia will share perspectives on the film and the October 29 panel, continuing our discussion of how people can organize to advance the idea that housing is a human right, not a commodity. Especially in this pandemic, it is clear that healthy and strong communities require efforts to improve public policies that affect people's access to housing and other basic needs. Leilani Farha will attend as a special guest to share ideas and models from cities around the world and consider how we can link housing justice struggles across our cities to #Maketheshift.

Further details: View the film, Push, online between October 24 and November 1. We have a limited number of free passes, and tickets can be purchased for $12. Once you register for tickets you can view the film within 7 days (Note: once you begin viewing you have 24 hours to watch film).

Thursday October 29, 7:00PM: Meet the former UN Special Rapporteur on the Human Right to Housing, Leilani Farha, who has been bringing demands for housing justice to the highest levels of government. Farha will speak to how these global changes impact cities like Pittsburgh and discuss how she is working to support the global housing rights movement through her organization, #Maketheshift. Other panelists include: Carl Redwood-Pittsburgh's Hill District Consensus Group. Facilitator: Rob Robinson, organizer with the US Human Rights Cities Alliance, International Alliance of Inhabitants, and Partners for Dignity and Rights.

Thursday November 5 at 7PM we’ll continue this conversation with a panel of locally based housing rights advocates from Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, and they'll be joined by Leilani Farha in a discussion considering the current housing challenges in our cities and how we can work to build a more powerful movement to protect human rights and dignity for everyone in our communities. Confirmed participants: Carl Redwood, Hill District Consensus Group (Others TBA)

• This event is part of our webinar series, Learning from COVID-19: Shaping a Health and Human Rights Agenda for our Region

Co-sponsoring groups: Carnegie Mellon University Film festival; University of Pittsburgh Global Studies Center; US Human Rights Cities Alliance, Pittsburgh Human Rights City Alliance; University Human Rights Working Group and Student Task Force; University of Pittsburgh Sociology Department, University of Pittsburgh Center for Bioethics and Health Law

Resources

• International Call: Zero Evictions for Coronavirus (March 13, 2020): The International Alliance of Inhabitants has been coordinating global pressure on governments and international agencies like the United Nations to ensure that policies are in place to enable people to quarantine safely in their homes during the coronavirus pandemic. They’ve been pushing for a global moratorium on evictions and raising awareness of how this crisis illustrates the importance of the human right to housing for everyone’s safety and well-being.
• Office of the UN Special Rapporteur on the Human Right to Adequate Housing
• COVID-19 and Government Obligations Regarding the Human Right to Housing-UN Guidance and Background
• Protecting the right to housing in the context of the COVID-19 outbreak Housing is a RIGHT, not a commodity
• Guidance Note: Prohibition of evictions in Pandemic (April 28, 2020)
• Report to the General Assembly: Covid-19 and the right to adequate housing (July 27, 2020)
• COVID-19 Guidance Note: Protecting housing from financialization and building back a better future UN Special Rapporteur on the Human Right to Adequate Housing (April 28, 2020)
• Ban evictions during COVID-19 pandemic, UN expert urges (August 2020)

Local Housing Justice Work

• Black Homes Matter Pittsburgh Fair Development Action Group, 2016
• Pittsburgh’s Hill District: A Short History