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Bringing America Home Act
News:
Bringing
America Home: the Campaign
This national, broad-based initiative is dedicated to the goal of ending homelessness. The Campaign is founded on the principles and action of public education, grassroots organizing and support for progressive policies and legislation. It is founded on the principles that people need affordable housing, livable incomes, health care, education, and protection of their civil rights. The Bringing America Home Campaign is composed of a variety of efforts that address these causes of homelessness, including the following key elements of the Campaign:
The Bringing America Home Act
This comprehensive bill includes resolutions putting Congress on record as supporting housing as a basic human right, Universal Health Care and a Living Wage; a dramatic expansion of federal resources for affordable housing and homelessness programs; a dramatic expansion of health care and services for people experiencing homelessness; greater income and work supports for people experiencing homelessness; temporary worker protections; and civil rights protections for people experiencing homelessness. The proposed legislation represents the most far-reaching initiative to date to address modern homelessness and is based on research, data, and the experience of front line providers and advocates.
The National Housing Trust Fund
A National Housing Trust Fund should be established to serve as a source of revenue for the production of new housing, and the preservation or rehabilitation of existing housing that is affordable for low-income people. The initial goal of the National Housing Trust Fund is to produce, rehabilitate, and preserve 1,500,000 units of affordable housing by 2010.
Health Care Access Resolution
The Health Care Access Resolution directs Congress to enact legislation that guarantees every person in the United States, regardless of income, age, employment or health status, has access to affordable, quality, comprehensive health care. The resolution seeks to build the political will and the conceptual common ground for comprehensive reform.
Universal Living Wage Resolution
ULW is based on the premise that if a person works 40 hours a week, then he/she should be able to afford basic housing. This resolution calls on Congress to enact legislation that Federal guidelines be established whereas no more than 30% of a person's gross monthly income should be spent on housing and that wages are based on the local cost of housing throughout the United States.
Temporary Worker Fairness & Protection Act
Temporary Workers work in an industry that is characterized by wage levels that keep workers in poverty as well as no job security, no health insurance, and inadequate worker protections. The Temporary Worker Fairness and Protection Act calls for federal legislation that offers day laborers the same rights and protections that are extended to permanent workers.
Civil Rights Protections for People Experiencing Homelessness
Legislation to prevent the criminalization of homelessness is included in the Bringing America Home Act. In addition, the campaign calls on Congress to ensure that no voting qualification or prerequisite to voting, or standard, practice, or procedure shall be imposed or applied by any State or political subdivision to deny or abridge the right of any citizen of the United States to vote because that citizen resides at or in a nontraditional abode. The campaign also calls on Congress for a GAO investigation and subsequent report into the nature and scope of violent acts and crimes that occur against people experiencing homelessness.
Please
contact your Representative and ask him/her to become an
co-sponsor of the Bringing America Home Act, the National
Housing Trust Fund, & the Health Care Access Resolution.
To contact your member of Congress, please call the U.S. Capitol
Switchboard at (202) 224-3121. For more information on the
Bringing America Home Campaign, contact Michael Stoops at
202.462.4822, mstoops@nationalhomeless.org. |
