Housing Rights

About

The Housing Rights Working Group supports the work of the Pittsburgh Housing Justice Table. We aim to raise awareness that housing is a human right under international law and to build a strong movement of organizations and concerned residents to advance and safeguard the right to housing in our communities. A key component of our work is addressing the increasing commodification of housing and how this imperils the health and stability of our residents and communities, especially diverse and marginalized populations. We seek to advance local policy changes and community-led initiatives (such as co-ops) that meaningfully expand access to safe, stable, affordable, and adequate housing.

Our Pittsburgh Human Rights-based Housing Strategy and Action Plan emerged from months of discussions and input sessions with local housing advocates and residents impacted by the commodification of housing. This document will help to guide us in transforming ideas into formal commitments for action by policy leaders in the city and county. Part of this involves broadening public awareness and mobilizing community group allies to understand housing as a human right and a social good and to build commitment and political will for the big changes needed to realize housing rights for everyone.

Recommended background reading:

• Map of Pittsburgh's racial housing policies and displacement of Black residents Pittsburgh's Housing Inequality and Affordability Shown in 15 Maps
• Pittsburgh’s Affordable Housing Crisis: Is Privatization the Solution? Daniel McClymonds, Jackie Smith, Connor Chapman & Randall Taylor, Urban Center for Social and Urban Research, University of Pittsburgh (Research Report, 2022).
• “Corporate Investments in Single-Family residential properties in Allegheny County: Recent Impacts” University Center for Social and Urban Research White Paper Sabina Deitrick & Chris Briem, April 2024.
• What can Pennsylvania municipalities do to protect affordable housing and empower tenants?,Bob Damewood, Regional Housing Legal Services Slide presentation at 2024 Pittsburgh Peoples Assembly for Fair & Equitable Housing.
• YWCA Conversations on Race--Housing Justice May 2024 Program features Carl Redwood, Hill District Consensus Group, and Randall Taylor, Penn Plaza Support & Action Coalition & Human Rights City Alliance--provides background on racial discrimination in Pittsburgh's housing policies and solutions people are putting forward to put people before profits.

Other Resources

• PUSH, the documentary is a great overview of how global finance is making housing so unaffordable in cities around the world, and what people can do about it.

• The Shift Directives: From Financialized to Human Rights-based Housing provides a road map for addressing the global housing crisis, beginning at the local level.
• The related podcast, PushBack Talks is also an excellent source of information and analysis about this complex issue.

• Biden/White House Blueprint for a Renters Bill of Rights (January 2023) --this "Blueprint" was issued as U.S. leaders anticipated mass evictions with the ending of COVID-19 rental assistance and eviction moratoriums. It was an inexpensive way for the federal government to appear to be taking action on this critically important problem. But we need to work to make these words meaningful in local policy.

• Alliance for a Just Philadelphia Position Paper on Rent Control -Here are ideas being put forward in Philly
• NYC Policy Brief on a Bill of Rights for Renters (NYC Office of the Comptroller, February 2020)