Advocacy Principles & Actions

In the Fall of 2020, HOPE’s Advocacy Team developed the following statement of Principles and Actions to guide our work.

Principles:

1. Housing is a human right.

• Everyone deserves housing that is safe, stable, affordable, and of high quality.

2. The root causes of poverty are structural and tractable.

• University, local, state, and national institutions bear responsibility for housing insecurity, so our work includes university, local, state, and national action.
• The systems we have inherited are the products of decisions by intentional people, and as such can be abolished in favor of just alternatives.

3. Housing justice is social justice. Housing justice is intersectional and affects different populations in particular ways. In order to push for housing justice, we must push to eliminate all of society’s structural barriers.

• Housing insecurity disproportionately harms low-income people, people of color, indigenous peoples, women, LGBTQ people, and immigrant communities.
• Discrimination in housing underlies today’s wealth and health gaps by preventing marginalized communities, and particularly Black residents from accruing wealth.
• Housing justice requires dismantling racism, sexism, classism, and settler-colonialism, and ending state violence against immigrants, LGBTQ people, and the poor, and all systems of oppression.

4. People experiencing homelessness and housing insecurity know best how to seek housing justice.

• Advocacy follows the lead and amplifies the voices of people with lived experiences of housing insecurity to raise awareness and build voting power.

5. Advocacy, direct service, and education are mutually constitutive elements of the movement for housing justice.

• Every HOPE member deserves accessible and interesting advocacy work.

6. We benefit from Brown University’s legacy of oppression and violence.

• Brown profits off buildings constructed by the forced labor of enslaved people on the traditional homelands of the Narragansett and Wampanoag peoples.
• Brown pushed out entire communities of color by gentrifying the East Side, making the neighborhood a destination for student housing instead of the communities who had long-established roots there.
• Our positionality presents challenges as well as opportunities to return power to the community and demand reparations from Brown.

7. We complement the work of our community partners.

• Cognizant of the difficulties endemic to student organizations, we seek lasting relationships in solidarity with our community partners.
• At the same time, we recognize that, as Brown students, we hold a unique position in the greater Providence community and housing advocacy ecosystem. We aim to use that positionality to our advantage in advocating for just structural solutions.

Actions:

1. Work with community partners to:

• Demanding legal representation for tenants in eviction cases (right-to-counsel) in the city and state
• Enact an eviction moratorium in RI that builds upon the CDC’s moratorium
• Promote the state “Justice Budget”
• Assist decriminalization efforts in RI’s municipalities
• Register voters from historically disenfranchised populations, including low-income tenants and people experiencing homelessness, and educate voters on housing issues
• Push for an adequate rental assistance fund to recover from Covid-19
• Work to pass a ban on source-of-income discrimination in Cranston

2. Work with both Direct Service and community partners on:

• Ensuring RI’s housing assistance programs reach the folks who need them most
• Projects like the “safe lot” that help the direct needs of our most vulnerable

3. Support racial justice efforts in both housing and other policy domains

4. Build on the progress we made last year in regard to University Relations, in the following ways:

• Deepen relationships with local City Council members and state legislators
• Expand education about the university’s role in housing and gentrification on the East Side, including through planning a walking tour
• Critically examine the university’s current housing policies
• Push for the collection and publication of Brown’s housing data and restrictions on off-campus residency
• Collaborate with other groups on campus, including student government, to hold Brown accountable for its powerful role in housing in the Providence and RI communities

5. Educate the Brown and broader housing justice communities through research, blog publications, and the How Did We Get Here Event

6. Support elected officials who promote housing justice both electorally and once they are in office