Housing: A human right, a vital part of health care, structural HIV prevention - and a global issue!

 An alliance of housing activists took over the space just outside the media center Tuesday at 1pm with a model encampment to dramatize the international crisis of homelessness. Demanding that policymakers recognize that housing needs to be an integral part of any response to the AIDS pandemic, they chanted, "Housing is a human right!" and "Que Queremos? Vivienda Digna!" (What do we want? Housing with dignity!)

It is a no-brainer that housing is a vital need for people living with HIV to cook healthy meals and take care of their medical needs (it's pretty hard to take your medication if your belongings keep getting taken or if you live in a shelter where they hold your meds), among other things. But recent research has confirmed what AIDS housing activists have known for 20 years -- stable housing helps individuals and communities prevent HIV too. Taking care of ourselves, whether HIV positive or negative, is much harder if you don't have a home. What are condoms and clean needles but tools to take care of ourselves? It's harder to get them and keep them on hand if you're homeless. And it's harder to demand that the people in your life go along with these protections if you are depending on them for a place to stay. To read some interviews with AIDS housing activists and researchers about this subject, see the recent issue of the Solidarity Project at http://www.champnetwork.org/solidarity_project/2008/05/en/solidarity-project-issue-8 or in Spanish at http://www.champnetwork.org/solidarity_project/2008/05/es/proyecto-solidaridad-n%C3%BAmero-8

My favorite thing about this protest was that while it was mainly organized by activists from New York City, from Housing Works and the New York City AIDS Housing Coalition (NYCAHN), inspiring examples of global solidarity were visible. Activists from South Africa, Haiti, and Peru were involved (see second photo for Haiti banner). Signs demanding "Housing now for people with HIV in ____" left blank a place for different countries to be represented (see third photo). My favorite part was when members of a theater troupe from India, Mela (Carnival), joined the housing action as we marched through the Global Village. A few of them laid down on the floor along with the housing activists when they formed the homeless encampment again. (See 4th photo).

On Monday, when activists interrupted Bill Clinton's speech to demand housing for people with AIDS, the president who in 1996 ended welfare as we knew it commented that homelessness is a problem that "wealthy countries" face. Well, his policies as president sure caused a lot of people to become homeless in the wealthy USA. But as activists pointed out in their press release for Tuesday's action, homelessness for people with AIDS is a serious crisis throughout the world. When I was researching for the recent issue of the Solidarity Project, the CHAMP publication I write for, I found that I also had Bill's weird disconnect in my brain - like, homelessness happens in rich countries, and then in poor countries you have "street children" and "shantytowns."

During my process of studying and interviewing activists in South Africa and New York City, I realized that the housing crisis is global, and it's all about gentrification and other forms of displacement. While human beings may be risking their lives to cross a border, the same borders hardly exist for corporations and global financial interests - which, I would argue, are the cause of homelessness and displacement globally. True solidarity means that we understand our differences, and in this case, displacement and homelessness do look different in different places, even if a single system is their cause.  

This brings me to another disconnect that I had in my brain before, that there are "homeless people" and "the rest of us." But how do people get homeless? Where I live, in Philadelphia, people's neighborhoods are disrupted because, from the perspective of business and city government, they are in the way of something... they are living in apartments that people with privileged access to decent jobs could pay more for; they are living in homes that could be demolished to build condos, etc. Around the world, people are living on and farming land that multinational corporations want, or that the World Bank wants for a development project that will not end up benefitting the local community but will increase the developing country's debt to the World Bank. Millions of people are unable to stay on their land because their crops can no longer be sold for a living on the market due to trade policies that favor Global North multinationals (see http://www.viacampesina.org). Capitalist globalization is a huge system with many ways of being in control of our lives, but if we can recognize the ways it's tearing people from their homes and land and leaving them with nothing, we can get the analysis we need to fight it, so that everyone can have a place to live with dignity.