Tars, a human rights attorney for the D.C.-based National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty, recently helped organize a visit to the United States by Raquel Rolnik, the United Nations special investigator on the right to adequate housing. Tars has been with the NLCHP since 2006, and works to bring international housing standards to light in the United States. As a part of her trip, Rolnik visited six cities, and ended her trip by visiting the District to meet with local housing issue campaigns and national lawyers.
How did you get involved with NLCHP?
After law school I worked for a couple years for an organization called Global Rights, helping to bring international human rights standards into domestic social justice advocacy. I then came to the law center to do that specifically, working on issues of housing and homelessness.
What part did you play in planning her trip?
Originally she was just planning her visit to D.C. to meet with federal officials and the State Department, but we wanted to make sure that she knew that housing in the District isn’t just for the federal government, but that people live here too, and that there’s a huge housing crisis.
What was your goal for her visit?
Through all of this, we just wanted to use the special opportunity of [her] visit to highlight some of the campaigns people in the District are currently working on.
What is the significance of the trip?
Now people understand that the housing crisis could happen to anyone, and that everyone deserves that safe, adequate place to lay their head at night, and that housing can’t be viewed as a commodity like any other; that housing is a basic human right. I think this visit comes at the perfect moment to help the U.S. make progress in understanding and reframing its policies to protect that right.
— Ben Giles
