A/HRC/31/54
cases, former partners or husbands who shared mortgages refused to negotiate with banks
for debt restructuring, relief or cancellation. When their homes were repossessed, they were
left with significant debt, often living in insecure housing — at severe risk of
homelessness.25
42.
Once homeless, women’s experiences are acute. They are exposed to high rates of
violence, including rape. In its inquiry into the situation of missing and murdered
indigenous women in Canada, the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against
Women recognized the link between Aboriginal women’s poverty, homelessness and their
disappearances and murder.26
43.
Homelessness among children and young people has reached critical proportions.
Factors that push children into leaving home include parents’ unemployment and poverty;
family disintegration and parental abuse; parental drug and alcohol addictions; and being
orphaned owing to HIV/AIDS, Ebola, armed conflict or natural disaster. Some families,
unable to support children because of extreme poverty, abandon or send them to urban
areas to work.27 Children raised in residential institutions often find themselves homeless
when they reach the age at which institutional care ceases. 28 Identified “pull” factors
include “spatial freedom, financial independence, adventure, city glamour and street-based
friendships or gangs”.29
44.
Most families of street-connected children have experienced persistent
discrimination, poverty and social exclusion. Street-connected children and young people
face particular challenges, including the threat of being removed from their parents for
neglect and put into orphanages or foster systems. 30 Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and
intersex young people are overrepresented in homeless populations in some countries and
face additional stigmatization and social exclusion from their families and communities,
and are more vulnerable to violence and more likely to be turned away from shelters.
45.
Families with children are at increasing risk of homelessness as parents are deprived
of the income necessary for housing and supply of affordable housing is depleted. In
Ireland, families with children have become the fastest growing group within the homeless
population.31 Those families risk losing their children to public authorities for failing to
provide adequate housing.
46.
People on the move, especially international migrants, refugees and internally
displaced persons, are also at significant risk of homelessness. Those groups suffer multiple
discrimination and numerous obstacles in securing temporary or permanent housing. In
many countries, such as Denmark32 and the Netherlands, public shelters do not
accommodate migrants or only accommodate them for limited periods of time.33 Migrants
are consequently forced to settle in slums, shacks and derelict or unfinished buildings;
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
Ibid.
See CEDAW/C/OP.8/CAN/1, paras. 112-118.Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.
Response to the questionnaire from Safe Child Africa, United Kingdom.
Response to the questionnaire from Ombudsman of the Republic of Moldova.
See A/HRC/19/35, para. 19.
Responses to the questionnaire from the organizations El Caracol AC of Mexico and Habitat for
Humanity of Hungary.
Response to the questionnaire from the organization FOCUS, Ireland.
Response to the questionnaire from the Danish Institute for Human Rights.
See case No. NLD 1/2014, in A/HRC/29/50.
11