event photos by Annie Seng

WHAT DOES HOME MEAN TO YOU?

OFFICE HOURS:
Tuesday – Friday 10:00am – 6:00pm

Map Directions

Grand Opening & Town Hall Meeting

Thursday June 2, 2011 | 6:00-9:00 p.m.

In a world polarized by race, class, religion, and other issues, our communities feel increasingly fragmented. But one thing many of us have in common is the desire for Home–be it a roof to keep out the rain, or a healthy community where everyone is allowed to pursue our dreams.

On June 2 The Office Of Human Rights takes over a vacant storefront at 1223 Vine Street, in Philadelphia.

THE OFFICE OF HUMAN RIGHTS, features over 50 photographs exploring the struggle for Home, stories-in-sound, and live remixing by DJ SpazeCraft One created live from your stories. Community members who visit the office on june 2 will be invited to “sit in our kitchen” and tell us what home means to You. Community members are also invited to ask this question of your neighbor and contribute, brick-by-brick, to building a collective definition of what Home means to the people of Chinatown and beyond.

Click Here for more details and directions

Storytelling Workshops
Friday June 3
Saturday June 4

The Housing is a Human Right project will host workshops in The Office of Human Rights to train participants of all ages in interview techniques and skills used to conduct in-depth oral-history interviews. Workshop participants are eligible to participate as interviewers in the series of Oral History Interviews conducted in The Office of Human Rights

SPACE IS LIMITED AND RSVP IS REQUIRED. For more information, or to RSVP for one of the storytelling workshops, email Nancy Chen, Program Assistant at Nancy.Chen@asianartsinitiative.org with your name, contact information, a brief introduction.

Housing is a Human Rightproject will conduct 12-15 in-depth interviews with local residents of the North Chinatown and Callowhill neighborhood on the subject of what it means to obtain and maintain a place to called home.

If you are interested in being interviewed or if you would like to recommend someone to be interviewed, please email Nancy Chen, Program Assistant, at Nancy.Chen@asianartsinitiative.org with your name, contact information, and a brief introduction.

Join us for a sneak peek screening of the film More Than a Roof and a Q&A and discussion. Produced in collaboration by The Campaign to Restore National Housing Rights, the National Econonmic and Social Rights Initiative and Housing is a Human Right, the film is a powerful example of community journalism, telling the story of the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Adequate Housing’s first official fact finding mission to the United States in 2009. Part travelogue, part call to action, More Than a Roof is a model of grassroots media making and movement building, created by people caught in the housing crisis, who believe that something better is possible. Click here to see the trailer and for more information.

This collaboration between Housing is a Human Right, the Asian Arts Initiative and the Laundromat Project has been supported in part by grants from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, the National Performance Network Visual Artists Network, and the Lambent Foundation Fund of Tides Foundation.

Click below to listen:

While battling cervical cancer, Linda Contes struggles to pay her hospital bills and mortgage payments. 

Evelyn Williams remembers a fire that ravaged her building in Crown Heights, Brooklyn in the 1980s and the fight for her home.

Please note: the track begins with Remixed Testimony.

COMING SOON:

Mandela’s Promise: A Dream Deferred

In 1994, South Africa ushered in a new era of hope and the promise of equality in the first democratic election in the nation’s history, hoisting Nelson Mandela to the presidency. Three years later, the country enacted one of the most progressive constitutions in the world, legislating, among other fundamental socioeconomic rights, the human right to adequate housing and sufficient water.

16 years since the fall of Apartheid, the vestiges of over 300 years of iron-fisted racial separation, exploitation and neglect remains visible in the country’s mushrooming slum population. Advocates estimate that well over 12 million people – nearly twice as many as in 1994- continue to live in substandard arrangements, with limited access to adequate housing, and basic services like clean drinking water and electricity. In the most haunting shadow of Apartheid, many also lack ‘security of tenure,’ living with the looming threat of forced eviction.

This series offers a glimpse into the lives of South Africans surviving against the odds as they struggle to realize the promises of a new South Africa, what Mandela pledged would mean “a better life for all.”

Mandela’s Promise is a project of Housing is a Human Right, produced in the summer of 2010.  We are currently securing resources to support post-production of a multi-part webisode series and exhibition.

HELP SUPPORT POST-PRODUCTION OF MANDELA’S PROMISE

Production Team:

Produced and Directed by Rachel Falcone & Michael Premo
Photography by Michael Premo
Production Assistant Dillon Colucci
Community Engagement and Program Consultant Jennifer Carr MacArthur, Borderline Media
Development Assistant Laila Petrone
Research Assistant Kevin Worthington
Research Assistant Anne Bozack
Volunteer Jennifer Terry

In response to this situation there is a grassroots effort in New York City to convert the many vacant buildings into affordable housing. Intro 48 is a bill that if passed would require New York City to count and track the number of vacant properties throughout the City, and would make this otherwise private information public. Advocates believe this would generate a public awareness of properties that could potentially be used to create low-income housing.

The bill has attracted 28 co-sponsors, a majority of the Council.  Despite this support, David Pristin, the Director of the Council’s Policy Division, recently stated that “with this legislation, this is not something we’re interested in moving forward, and we’re setting it to the side.” City Council Speaker Christine Quinn has publicly stated her support for the legislation, but despite support from elected officials the bill is locked in bureaucratic limbo by appointed   To rally support for this legislation homeless leaders with grassroots, membership led folks will be leading a WALKING TOUR OF VACANT BUILDINGS AND LOTS IN CHRISTINE QUINN’S HOME DISTRICT.

photos by Michael Premo

photos my Michael Premo

JPMorgan Chase — which received a $25 billion bailout, and owns numerous vacant lots in NYC, foreclosed on hundreds of thousands of working people throughout the U.S.

Picture the Homeless is seeking a meeting with Chase’s CEO and Board of Directors — for the purpose of creating a Homeless People’s Trust Fund and Community Land Trust, utilizing vacant property and other resources to be made available by JPMorgan Chase.

Produced by Housing is a Human Right, Michael Premo and Rachel Falcone

A Short Documentary Chronicling the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Adequate Housing’s First Official Mission to the United States.

A powerful example of community journalism, More than A Roof tells the story of the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Adequate Housing’s first official fact finding mission to the United States in 2009.

When Raquel Rolnik, UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Adequate Housing, heeded a call to visit the United States during the heart of the housing crisis, it was the first time a UN expert on housing had formally investigated the United States. Knowing the story might never be told, a network of more than 70 grassroots organizations across the country coordinated her tour, mobilizing dozens of volunteer media makers, residents and organizers to document it.

Culled from this footage, More Than a Roof follows the Special Rapporteur’s historic cross-country journey to witness the human impacts of the crisis.

Through the film’s raw, honest footage, we see Americans crowded into mold-infested trailers on Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, on the brink of losing homes to foreclosure in the old coal town of Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, camped out on the streets of Skid Row in downtown Los Angeles, and displaced by the massive destruction of public housing complexes in cities across the country.

The documentary was produced through a consensus-based post-production process that engaged a media collective with a national network of community-based organizations to create a film that offers a window into what Ms. Rolnik saw on the mission and the growing movement that has continued to blossom since her visit.

Part travelogue, part call to action, More Than a Roof is a model of grassroots media making and movement building, created by people living in crisis, who believe that something better is possible.

More Than a Roof is MORE THAN A FILM.

This trailer was screened at an event entitled “The Housing Rights Situation in the US” which took place at the UN Headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, on March 5, 2010. That same day the Special Rapporteur presented her report on the US mission to the United Nations Human Rights Council.

Bring More Than a Roof to Your Community:

A screening tour will begin in Fall 2011 with the launch of a grassroots human rights curriculum. If you are interested in hosting a screening of the film, participating in the tour or using it in your classroom, please contact us at info (@ ) housingisahumanright.org