Does the United States Have an Obligation to Provide Adequate Housing?

Does the United States Have an Obligation to Provide Adequate Housing?

Does the United States Have an Obligation to Provide Adequate Housing?

Homelessness Persons Defined in International Law

The United Nations has defined homeless households as “households without a shelter that would fall within the scope of living quarters. They carry their few possessions with them, sleeping in the streets, in doorways or on piers, or in any other space, on a more or less random basis.”[1]

Who Figures Strongly in the Homelessness Demographic?

Black Americans in the US strongly figure in the homelessness demographic. It is well known and widely acknowledged that Black adults have been systematically denied—often explicitly by the law itself—equal civil rights and myriad socio-economic opportunities in the US[2] that has resulted in their homelessness state.

Why Are Black Americans Homeless in the United States?

The Special Rapporteur on adequate housing has highlighted that poverty is a common denominator in the experience of people experiencing homelessness.[3] Homelessness and poverty are inextricably linked.[4]

Concentrated poverty and residential segregation have increased during the post-civil rights era creating settings in which the behaviours that define antisocial personality, as seen with the Neely and Brown cases, are more likely to reflect the social environment rather than individual psychopathology.[5] To be sure, Rhee and Rosenheck found race-based inequalities in lifetime homelessness were primarily associated with differences in income, incarceration history, exposure to traumatic events, and to a lesser extent by antisocial personality disorder, age and parental drug use.[6]  

According to General Resolution 34, States should develop and implement policies and projects aimed at avoiding the segregation of communities in housing, such as Black Americans. The involvement of “communities of people of African descent” should be seen “as partners in housing project construction, rehabilitation, and maintenance.”[7]

Does the United States Have an Obligation to Provide Adequate Housing?

What Does the Right to Adequate Housing Guarantee?

While some articles claim that Americans are provided a bundle of protections through the Fair Housing Act, research demonstrates there are still particularly high levels of segregation in metropolitan areas with large Black populations. Indeed, Jargowsky, Ding and Fletcher found the racial and economic segregation in the nation points to the failure of the US to fully implement the FHA, particularly the law’s directive to affirmatively further fair housing. The Researchers also stated the large goal of integrated living patterns – the polar opposite of “two societies…separate and unequal” – has not been achieved. In other words, the patterns of Jim Crow are still alive.

The Obligation to Fulfil

Obligations to protect rest primarily with the US legislature, who is required to adopt laws ensuring that housing is available for people experiencing homelessness and persons in distress.[10] Indeed, the Special Rapporteur on adequate housing has called homelessness “perhaps the most visible and most severe symptom of the lack of respect for the right to adequate housing.”[11] States’ obligations towards the full realization of the right to adequate housing include taking measures to prevent homelessness.[12] Under the obligation to fulfil, the US must prevent and address homelessness; provide the physical infrastructure required for housing to be considered adequate, or ensure adequate housing to individuals or groups unable, for reasons beyond their control, to enjoy the right to adequate housing, notably through housing subsidies and other measures.[13]


[1] UN. “The Right to Adequate Housing.” United Nations Office of the High Commissioner, www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/Documents/Publications/FS21_rev_1_Housing_en.pdf. Accessed 15 May 2023.

[2] Id.

[3] Id., p. 22

[4] National Coalition for the Homeless. “Why Are People Homeless?” Why Are People Homeless?, nationalhomeless.org/publications/facts/Why.pdf. Accessed 15 May 2023.

[5] Id., p. 168.

[6] Rhee, Taeho Greg, and Robert A Rosenheck. “Why Are Black Adults Over-Represented among Individuals Who Have Experienced Lifetime Homelessness? Oaxaca-Blinder Decomposition Analysis of Homelessness among US Male Adults.” Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, 2020, https://doi.org/10.1136/jech-2020-214305, p. 167.

[7] Thornberry, Patrick. “The Right to Housing.” International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination: A Commentary, Oxford University Press, Croydon, 2016, p. 370.

[8] Kälin, Walter, and Künzli, Jörg. The Right to Adequate Housing. The Law of International Human Rights Protection. Oxford University Press, 2019, p. 300.

[9] Id.

[10] Id., p. 302.

[11] Supra, note 1, p. 21.

[12] Id., p. 23.

[13] Id., p. 34.

Quianna Canada

Quianna Canada

Quianna Canada is a B.A. Law student at the University of Arizona, a Human Rights Defender, anti-torture activist. Her conversance with the American criminal justice system has made her passionate about justice and equality. Her focused researched on the ills of rankism, racism, and gender-based prejudice makes her an insightful expert at identifying maltreatment immanent in institutions, and how oppression effects ostracised persons in the world.

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