A Year in the Battle to End Homelessness

With your support, the Law Center enjoyed tremendous success in 2009, winning new protections and fighting to uphold existing ones for homeless persons and those at risk of homelessness.

Thanks in part to our advocacy, Congress passed the Homeless Emergency Assistance and Rapid Transition to Housing (HEARTH) Act, which increased federal resources to prevent homelessness and to house those already homeless, and required that the federal government develop a plan to end homelessness.

We were also instrumental in the passage of the Protecting Tenants at Foreclosure Act, providing tenants of foreclosed properties unprecedented federal protections, including the right to 90-days notice prior to eviction or, in some cases, the right to stay in their homes until the end of their lease.

Thanks to years of advocacy by the Law Center and others, the D.C. and Maryland legislatures became the first to add homeless people as a protected class in their hate crime statutes.

And the Law Center co-organized the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Adequate Housing's first official visit to the United States, including her appearance at our National Forum on the Human Right to Housing in DC, where she heard testimony from homeless advocates from around the country. She will submit a report to the UN Human Rights Council on her visit in March 2010.

The Law Center also engaged in select litigation.  In a suburb of Pittsburgh, for instance, where homeless children were illegally denied school enrollment because of their homelessness, the Law Center stepped in and fought successfully to enroll them.  The school has appealed, and the Law Center continues to defend the children's rights.

Despite these major victories, we must press on in the battle to end homelessness in America. We have big plans to continue to work with all levels of government to prevent and end homelessness while advocating for the rights of people experiencing it in 2010. We hope you will join us.

To read more about what we were able to accomplish together in 2009, click here.

To read more about the Law Center's plans for 2010, click here.