Photo by Nathan Stoltzfus
Maria Foscarinis is the author of the new book And Housing for All: The Fight to End Homelessness in America. She is the founder of the National Homelessness Law Center, and she teaches Homelessness Law and Policy at Columbia Law School.
Q: What inspired you to write And Housing for All?
A: I’ve been advocating for solutions to homelessness nationally since virtually the beginning of the modern crisis, and I’ve seen up close the deliberate policy choices that have led to it—and their impact on human beings. I wanted to tell the story of those choices and their impact in a way that’s accessible to the general reader.
Also, over the years, I’ve met and worked with thousands of unhoused people, and I wanted to find a way to honor their lives and experiences. The book includes a few of their stories and voices into the narrative.
My hope is that the book will inform and enrage readers--and spur them to demand change.
Q: The writer Gary Krist said of the book, “And Housing for All makes an impassioned argument that the right to housing should be—and in fact is—a fundamental human right.” What do you think of that description?
A: I admire Gary and I’m thrilled with his description! Housing is in fact a basic human right, even though US policy doesn’t treat it that way.
I wanted the book to make the argument for it by showing what it means when that right is not honored: the deliberate policy decisions that violate it and cause untold suffering for human beings. I didn’t want to write an academic book; I put details and sources in the endnotes for readers who want more.
The narrative is driven by events in legislatures, courts, and the myriad places where unhoused people live—in shelters, on the floors of friends and family, in cars, the backs of trucks, on sidewalks, in encampments.
Q: As someone who has worked on homelessness issues for a long time, what changes have you seen over the years?
A: Housing costs have skyrocketed, and corporate investors like private equity are driving the commodification of housing.
That means that increasingly housing is functioning as a vehicle for profit instead of a way to meet a basic need we all have as human beings. Instead of being treated as a human right, it’s ever more blatantly treated as a commodity. That’s how we get cities with unoccupied homes on “billionaires’ rows” while unhoused people sleep outside.
Meanwhile, the minimum wage hasn’t been increased since 2009, safety net programs have been shredded, with housing assistance helping only one in four of those eligible. Encampments of people with nowhere else to go are now everywhere. And the dominant response in most cities is make it a crime to live outside—even though there are no indoor alternatives.
Last summer, the Supreme Court gave the green light to criminalizing policies, and these kinds of laws have risen dramatically. But there is also increasing activism for the human right to housing.
Before last November’s election, we were gaining ground—the idea that housing should be a right was entering the political mainstream, much like healthcare recently had. Especially at the state and local level, this activism is continuing--and growing.
Q: Given the current political situation, what do you see looking ahead when it comes to homelessness?
A: The cuts to safety net programs now going through Congress will undoubtedly deepen the crisis. Even though housing has not yet been targeted specifically, cuts to food and health care assistance means poor people will have even fewer resources for housing. The choice between putting food on the table and making rent will become even starker.
At the same time, bigger tax breaks for the wealthy will mean more money poured into luxury housing that sits vacant as an investment. Cuts to the federal workforce will make getting access to remaining aid programs even harder than it already is; attacks on the nonprofit sector threatens both direct aid and advocacy for change; and attacks on private law firms will make getting pro bono support to fight back more challenging.
Despite this grim landscape, I also see hope for progress. Organizations like the one I founded—the National Homelessness Law Center—are challenging punitive laws that criminalize homelessness—and winning battles at the state and local level.
Grass roots groups like House Our Neighbors in Seattle are organizing public support for social housing—housing that is subsidized and permanently affordable—and winning. Much of the fight will shift to the state and local level—but it will continue.
Giving up is not an option!
Q: What are you working on now?
A: I’m getting ready to teach my seminar on homelessness Law and Policy at Columbia Law School again this fall. I enjoy engaging with young people at the beginning of their legal careers—they inspire me and give me hope as a new generation of advocates emerges.
Next spring I plan to be at a university in Brazil on a Fulbright fellowship. There is very interesting organizing and advocacy on homelessness and housing there and I’m looking forward to learning more about it while also sharing what I’ve learned from my work here. I’ll be looking for ways to bring back ideas to share with US advocates.
I’m not sure about another book—I have a few ideas but nothing formed enough as yet to share!
Q: Anything else we should know?
A: Homelessness is an urgent and growing crisis in America. It’s something people see in their daily lives, and I think many people instinctively understand that it’s part of the bigger affordable housing problem that’s gripping much of the country.
But there’s a real lack of understanding about how we reached this point, and a lot of misconceptions about homelessness itself. I hope my book can help more people understand the issues and how we can all take action to make change!
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
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