As the elections approach, we are gearing up to put homelessness on the agenda-at all levels of government. We are focusing not only on the Presidential election, but also on the Congressional and local elections. We invite your participation and involvement!

On July 17, at 3:30 pm ET, national advocates will officially launch our joint Five Fundamentals Campaign to End & Prevent Homelessness. We've created a toolkit that you can use in your community at whatever level you wish. We are asking candidates to pledge to end and prevent homelessness by endorsing the five fundamentals and making them a top priority if elected. Details for joining the national conference call launching the campaign are below.

We're also planning activities at both national conventions. On August 24, a breakfast will be held for delegates to the Democratic convention to educate them about homelessness and policies to end and prevent it. The event is organized by Mayor John Hickenlooper of Denver and the National Alliance to End Homelessness, with the support and participation of NLCHP and other national advocates. It is essential that we get as many delegates involved as possible! Please help by getting the word out to your contacts. Educational events at the Republican national convention may also be held. Watch our websit e for more details in the coming weeks.

Events to register homeless people to vote are also planned for both conventions, sponsored by local advocates with support from the National Coalition for the Homeless, NLCHP and others. More information is available here.

Please let us know of your efforts in your communities! Thanks for your work.

Maria Foscarinis
Executive Director

Advocates and service providers concerned with homelessness and poverty are invited to a conference call for the launch of the "Five Fundamentals Campaign." The campaign, organized by an assembly of national organizations concerned with homelessness, challenges candidates for public offices at all levels and branches of government to pledge to include, if elected, the prevention of and end to homelessness among their public policy priorities.

The phone call will review the purpose of the campaign, discuss campaign objectives, and introduce participants to the materials contained in a campaign tool kit. The tool kit will be available next week at http://www.na tionalhomeless.org/.

The call will take place Thursday, July 17, 2008, 3:00 PM eastern time, DIAL-IN 866 878 4191, Code 1010942. For more information about the campaign or the call, please contact Andrew Malloy at amalloy@nationalhomeless.org or 202.462.4822.

With the assistance of the law firm of Hogan & Hartson, the National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty (NLCHP) just released its third report on protecting and promoting voting rights for homeless persons. While homeless people cannot be denied the right to vote just because they do not have a home, state and federal laws make it difficult for homeless people to exercise this important right. Some of the biggest barriers homeless people face when registering or voting are mailing address requirements, durational residency requirements, identification requirements, and getting to the polls on Election Day.

NLCHP's report documents some of the barriers people experiencing homelessness face when attempting to register and vote and provides guidance on how to overcome those barriers. The report also contains a state-by-state listing of voting laws that impact homeless people.

"We hope that our report can serve as a useful tool for homeless persons and advocates alike to ensure that homeless persons' voices are heard on Election Day," said Tulin Ozdeger, Civil Rights Director at NLCHP.

The report is available on the publications section of the NLCHP web site. On July 8, 2008, NLCHP conducted an audio training on voting rights for homeless persons. Materials used during that training are also available on the NLCHP web site.

On June 13, 2008, a federal district judge in Baltimore City approved a class action settlement brought on behalf of homeless students against the Baltimore County Board of Education and its Superintendent in Peterson v. Board of Education, Baltimore County, Civ. No. 1-06-cv-1067. Plaintiffs were represented by NLCHP partner the Public Justice Center, Inc., a non-profit legal organization that represents poor people and victims of discrimination in a variety of areas, including homeless children's education under the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act.

The lawsuit was filed in April 2006, on behalf of several mothers and their children who had been residents at numerous homeless shelters in Baltimore County. Plaintiffs encountered a variety of barriers to their children's education in violation of McKinney-Vento: some of the homeless students had never been identified; others had serious difficulty obtaining adequate or reliable transportation to their schools of origin and then felt pressured to transfer to the local school, against the child's best interest. Moreover, Plaintiffs' counsel identified a number of problems with the school system's policies and procedures, and pressed for changes to forms and policies to better identify and serve homeless students.

Although the parties negotiated the case for two years, the school system had agreed to implement major changes - including an agreement that transportation to the school of origin will be arranged within 4 days of the date the student is identified as homeless - within months of the filing. Plaintiffs will be monitoring the settlement agreement for two years and are set to receive the first round of compliance data at the conclusion of the fall 2008 semester.

Text of the complaint, settlement, and other related documents are available here on NLCHP's wiki site, still in its beta version.

-Sally Dworak-Fisher of the Public Justice Center, who litigated the Peterson case, contributed this article. Thanks, Sally!

The National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty recently signed on to an amicus (friend of the court) brief filed in the Georgia Supreme Court to help draw attention to problems with a portion of Georgia's sex offender registration law that requires former sex offenders to register their address with authorities but does not allow such persons to register as homeless. The law subjects people to additional penalties for failing to register their address, but many jurisdictions in Georgia will not accept an outside location - or in some cases even a shelter address - as the person's address under the registration law, thus subjecting individuals to additional punishment solely on the basis of their homelessness.

In the brief, NLCHP joined the Southern Center for Human Rights, the Georgia Task Force for the Homeless, and the Metro Atlanta Task Force for the Homeless in arguing that the challenged portion of the law, O.C.G.A. § 42-1-12(a)(1), violates individuals' rights because (1) it is unconstitutionally vague in that it fails to provide homeless citizens with adequate notice of what is an acceptable "address" under the statute; (2) the statute mentions nothing about an intent requirement despite imposing substantial criminal penalties, in violation of the Due Process Clause, and (3) it punishes homeless people on the basis of their "status" as homeless in violation of the United States and Georgia Constitutions' prohibition against punishment on the basis of status.

This summer, NLCHP and fellow human rights advocates have good reason to celebrate. On June 18, 2008 the United Nations Human Rights Council approved an Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (OP-ICESCR). Optional protocols delineate how a treaty body or committee listens to individual victims of human rights violations and addresses their concerns. Most major human rights treaties have optional protocols in place. Yet, victims under this treaty had no such mechanism. A treaty body existed that could hear general country reports, but it was missing something crucial: an ear for the victim. Now individuals, including those suffering from inadequate housing or forced evictions, have an ally who can listen.

Under the OP-ICESCR the U.N. Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights has the authority to "receive and consider communications set forth" in the treaty. The Committee will be able to provide "interim measures" for a State Party's "urgent consideration." In other words, the Committee will listen to and vocalize the concerns of individuals to their government, recommend active steps to ameliorate the problem and if necessary, request a visit to the area for observation. The OP-ICESCR also requires that victims communicating with the Committee not be subjected to "ill-treatment or intimidation" for seeking assistance. The OP-ICESCR must be approved by the General Assembly and ratified by 10 states before it goes into force.

Although the United States has not yet ratified the underlying ICESCR, it is a signatory, meaning that its domestic practices and policies may not contravene the treaty's overall purpose. Regardless, the cases brought to the ESCR Committee from other countries will be useful in demonstrating a growing desire and feasibility in enforcing affirmative duties on governments, including a right to housing. NLCHP welcomes the Optional Protocol, knowing that a new wave of international discussion and jurisprudence on the right to housing is at hand.

For more information visit: OP- IESCR Coalition

Center on Housing Rights and Evictions

U.N. Press Release

A special thanks to the US Human Rights Fund! NLCHP has received a $100,000 program grant over two years from the US Human Rights Fund. This grant will support our work training and supporting advocates and attorneys working to end and prevent homelessness, educating policy makers, and increasing public awareness of the human right to housing.

NLCHP has been admitted to the 2008 Combined Federal Campaign (CFC) as a member of Human & Civil Rights Organizations of America. The CFC allows federal employees to designate charitable donations to member organizations. The 2008 CFC will kick off around the country in September. Visit http://ww w.hcr.org/members_cfc.html for a complete listing of members participating in the 2008 CFC.

Over the next year, NLCHP will be hosting a series of audio trainings on all of our programs, leading up to a National Conference in early 2009.

Accessing Federal Nutrition Programs to Assist Children in Shelter: July 31, 2008 2:00-3:00 EST

During this session we will discuss our research findings on the Child and Adult Care Food Program. We will also provide information on how domestic violence and emergency shelters can better access this vital safety net program.

Register for upcoming trainings here - Stay tuned for a full schedule and details!

Last month's article on the visit of the Special Rapporteur on Racism omitted Miami as one of his destinations. NLCHP regrets the error. An article on the visit to Miami will appear in next month's issue of In Just Times.

NLCHP is a 501(c)(3) organization. Visit our website at www.nlchp.org! Contact us at (202) 638-2535 or email us at nlchp@nlchp.org