Western Regional Advocacy Project

Why wouldn't our government want the people being governed to be educated, healthy, well-housed and able to freely be in nature? Is it wrong to think that government should want these things for all people?

We can't put our hope in politicians and organizations that attempt to smooth out the edges of terrible legislation while people lose their homes and programs are gutted. In communities across the country, groups are joining hands to build a movement for the human right to housing.

These are the civilized people; they are consumers. They are us. The people these laws are enforced against are not us. They are them.

It is time we put an end to the federal government selling off precious publicly owned housing stock and reinvest in people and housing as a human right, not a commodity.

The criminal justice system has displaced the mental health system as the main institution for dealing with poor people with psychiatric disabilities in the United States.

Across the nation, cities are responding to poverty and homelessness not by creating programs to enable people to survive these harsh times, but by persecuting the victims of an economic downturn of historic dimensions.

Poor people are never mentioned in political discourse. But this is particularly shameful at a time when HUD's own numbers show a 20% increase of households in dire need.

The decision to cut annual appropriations for the Public Housing Capital Fund was neither necessary nor inevitable. As a country, we must stop gambling with people's homes.