CIVIL RIGHTS:

Led by homeless leaders who refuse to stay in shelter, our position is that if you lose your housing and choose to live in public spaces, your constitutional and human rights should not be abused by the police! We fight to end selective enforcement of Quality of Life regulations -- "Whose Quality of Life" is improved by moving homeless people from public spaces? We fight the lack of legal representation for homeless people, pressured to plead guilty instead of exercising their right to trial, and forced to return to court over and over if they choose to not plead guilty. We are also working to ensure that homeless New Yorkers' right to vote is protected, including in city jails.

The Civil Rights Committee is currently engaged in a campaign against Disorderly Conduct. The police use “Disorderly Conduct” to arrest or ticket homeless people – a key tool in the criminalization, profiling, and harassment of the homeless.  We believe that the vagueness of Dis Con is unconstitutional, and that the NYPD should be required to specify one’s alleged violation.  We demand that Dis Con be clearly recognized in practice as a non-arrestable offense.

We are currently gathering surveys and testimonies from homeless New Yorkers to build this campaign, and possibly file a lawsuit against the NYPD. The Civil Rights campaign also engages in Know Your Rights and CopWatch workshops. Our goal is to equip homeless New Yorkers with tools that they need to defend themselves and their community from harmful and unjust police abuses.

For more information, contact Brandon King at brandon@picturethehomeless.org

See our Civil Rights accomplishments!

HOUSING:

It's not a homeless crisis -- it's a housing crisis!  The city's best hope for reducing and preventing homelessness is a commitment to addressing the skyrocketing rents and general housing shortage that plague New York. Yet at the same time as the homeless population continues to escalate, landlords and the city continue to keep buildings empty! In fact, the total volume of potential apartments in vacant buildings and lots in Manhattan alone could likely house all the homeless households in shelter!  Our Housing Not Warehousing campaign sees homelessness against the backdrop of this massive warehousing of otherwise habitable vacant spaces.  We have been pushing city legislation that would require the city to conduct an annual census of all vacant buildings and lots, so that this information is always readily available to the public.

The Housing campaign is working to transform the use of vacant spaces through a range of tactics -- including direct action occupations and renovations, public education, and participatory research.  Our goal is to facilitate the creation of safe, secure and TRULY AFFORDABLE housing for the lowest income residents of the city, through innovative community and housing development models.

The Housing campaign is concerned with the warehousing of all vacant property, regardless of ownership.  The campaign is organizing to move owners of vacant property, public or private, to turn those properties over to a Land Trust, and permanently-affordable Mutual Housing Associations created out of them.  The publicly-subsidized, privately-owned financial services firm JPMorgan Chase is one of our targets. We are also one of the founding participants of the national Take Back the Land initiative, because we are clear that challenging property rights is not a fight that we can win without civil disobedience and other forms of direct action.

For more information, contact Frank Morales at frank@picturethehomeless.org

See our Housing accomplishments!

* CANNERS' ECONOMIC JUSTICE

* EMERGENCY ASSISTANCE

* POTTERS FIELD

* RENTAL SUBSIDIES

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