Everyone Needs a Home

“Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including . . . housing.”​—Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 25.

A LARGE migrant farmworker population has gradually settled in an area they now call home. Hundreds of families reside just outside town in low-rent trailer camps called parqueaderos. Here such basic services as sewage disposal, a reliable water supply, and garbage removal are rudimentary at best or even nonexistent. One reporter described this settlement as “a place so poor [farmworkers] could afford to live there.”

Three years ago, when officials started closing down a few of the sites, some of the families sold their trailers and moved into the already overcrowded houses, apartments, and garages in the center of town. Others simply picked up and moved on, in search of a place they could come back to after each harvest​—somewhere they could call home.

Are you picturing some place in Central or South America? Think again. You could find this trailer camp near the town of Mecca in southern California, U.S.A., less than an hour’s drive east of the affluent city of Palm Springs. Although home ownership in the United States is said to be at an all-time high and the median family income in 2002 was about $42,000, it has been estimated that more than five million American families still live in inadequate housing.

 The situation is much more serious in developing lands. Despite a number of political, social, and religious initiatives, the global housing crisis is steadily getting worse.

A Global Crisis

The number of people living in slums worldwide is estimated to be more than a billion. Brazilian experts in urbanization fear that the ever-growing favelas, or slums, in that country will soon “become larger and more populous than the cities in which they were first established.” There are Nigerian cities where more than 80 percent of the population live in slums and squatter settlements. “If no serious action is taken,” said UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan in 2003, “the number of slum dwellers worldwide is projected to rise over the next 30 years to about 2 billion.”

Cold statistics like these, however, do not even begin to communicate the devastating personal toll that substandard living conditions exact on the world’s poor. According to the United Nations, more than half the people in developing countries lack basic sanitation, a third do not have access to clean water, a quarter lack adequate housing, and a fifth do not have access to modern health services. Most people in developed lands would not even let their pets live in conditions like that.

A Universal Right

Suitable shelter is commonly accepted as a basic human need. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the United Nations in 1948, declared that everyone has the right to an adequate standard of living, including satisfactory housing. Indeed, everyone needs a decent home.

More recently, in 1996, a number of countries adopted what came to be known as the UN’s Habitat Agenda. This document outlines specific commitments to provide adequate shelter for all. Thereafter, on January 1, 2002, the UN strengthened this commitment further by formalizing this agenda into a full-fledged UN program.

It is ironic that just as some of the richest nations have begun renewing calls to build colonies on the moon and explore Mars, growing numbers of their poorest citizens cannot even afford a decent place to live here on earth. How does the housing crisis affect you? Is there any real hope that one day all will have their own comfortable home?

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While some nations look into colonizing the moon, many of their citizens lack a decent place to live on earth

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AN ASIAN REFUGEE FAMILY.

In one city 3,500 families live in makeshift tents and are in dire need of water and sanitation

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© Tim Dirven/Panos Pictures

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NORTH AMERICA