Supportive housing in the age of market fundamentalism : a human rights-based approach to the provision of supportive housing for mentally ill homeless people

Abstract

Despite its cost-effectiveness, supportive housing is grossly underprovided. In this paper, I build a rights-based strategy for supportive housing advocates, specifically structured around meeting the needs of mentally ill homeless people. A rights-based strategy, emanating from constitutional law, is the most robust way to secure this support. The failure of New York State to provide supportive housing for mentally ill homeless people is a prima facie violation of human rights under domestic law (specifically, NYS constitution Article 17, Section 1) and various international treaties. The government has enforced a property ownership and regulatory regime that interferes with mentally ill citizens' ability to satisfy their basic needs and therefore must provide a publicly-financed remedy for their condition. This thesis identifies the best legal strategy by which activists can secure this remedy. To make this is case, it is necessary to circumvent resistance from federal courts to affirmative welfare policy. I do this by identifying the state law basis of the right to adequate housing. Once it has been established as a right at the state level, federal attitudes take a different character as federal courts treat welfare entitlements as property-and federal courts vigorously defend property.