Defending the Right to a Home: The Power of Anti-Poverty Lawyers FROM THE PUBLISHER
Examining the influence of legal professionals on the dynamics of state policy making, this book looks at the responses of poverty lawyers to the social welfare law reforms of US Congress and state legislatures. Against a political climate characterized by its hostility towards welfare programmes, cutbacks in public assistance for poor families, the decline in available low-income housing and increasing levels of homelessness, Legal Services lawyers in several states initiated class action suits to protect families from losing their homes. This book presents a look at the poverty lawyers claims that when policies and practices of state officials prevent parents and children from being able to live together in their own dwellings, the state violates the legal rights of families. Providing careful case study analysis this book will prove an excellent resource for courses on public governance, human rights and law and society.
SYNOPSIS
Harris examines how the concept of the right to a home has eroded and been renewed under the leadership of poverty lawyers and activists. She begins by explaining how legislation and adjudication have created "market justice," which helps to create homelessness and issues of child and family welfare. She describes the work of individual homeless people and coalitions for the homeless and their attorneys, and the effects of cases such as Hansen v. McMahon, Norman v. Johnson, Jiggetts v. Grinker, Massachusetts Coalition for the Homeless v. Secretary of Human Services and Washington State Coalition for the Homeless v. Secretary of DSHS. Harris includes chronologies of cases and their effects on issues of homelessness and the right to live indoors. Annotation ©2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
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