The Brighton & Hove Housing Coalition, in conjunction with FEANTSA, Housing Rights Watch and Just Fair, will be presenting its petition to adopt the Homeless Bill of Rights to the City Council meeting on Thursday 25th July 2019.
Our members and supporters are asked to gather outside Hove Town Hall for 2:30PM, to lobby councillors as they go into the start of the meeting at 3pm.
Please contact your friends and allies in the struggle to attend if they can and to spread the news!
If you are resident in Brighton & Hove, please also email your councillors and ask them to support the unconditional adoption of the Homeless Bill of Rights as a statement of principles for the Council to work towards and abide by.
Also present will be the installation commemorating the homeless dead of 2018, as set out in an earlier post.
Koldo Casla, Policy Director of Just Fair, says:
The reality of homelessness is the UK is a painful reminder of why, now more than ever, we need to secure the right to adequate housing and other social rights in law and practice. As observed by the UN Special Rapporteur on Adequate Housing, Leilani Farha, “effective implementation of the right to adequate housing cannot be achieved without the proactive involvement of local and subnational governments.” We very much welcome the Homeless Bill of Rights of Brighton & Hove. Even within the limits of diminishing resources, local authorities have the opportunity and responsibility to fulfil the right to adequate housing and other human rights for all without discrimination of any kind.
Freek Spinnewijn, Director of FEANTSA, has called on the Leader of the Council to support it in a letter:
On behalf of FEANTSA, the European Federation of National Organisations Working with the Homeless, I hereby invite you to endorse the Homeless Bill of Rights in Brighton and Hove. …
We at FEANTSA strongly believe that cities must play a critical role in recognising and vindicating the human rights of all citizens. Endorsing the bill entails an explicit support by the city for the European campaign and the start of a change of policy in the city around homelessness.
We encourage the City of Brighton and Hove to commit to the Homeless Bill of Rights and for it to be translated into firm actions to promote and respect its values.