those the headlines talked al-jazeera is next. hate violence preventing an increasingly alienated generation is finding new outlets to vent. in a new series. takes an unflinching at the end of radicalized organizations to young people revealing their things and often brutal consequences for those drawn into their extreme ideologies radicalized youth coming say on al-jazeera. and. you can. see. it's the one riddle that seems almost impossible to solve look at any major city regardless of political or economic system and the chances are it's not solved the basic issue for its citizens how to strike a balance between supply and demand for housing and in that dilemma lies

a real human rights problem at least according to the un special rapporteur to adequate housing leylandii for how she was appointed in twenty fourteen and the picture she's painting of this difficult situation isn't pretty given how persistent and pervasive it is around the world a natural question to ask is is there any solution and any particular or easily identifiable calls. we discussed this real and complex question with. on talk to al jazeera. long before her special rough put on the right to adequate housing thank you for talking to al-jazeera we'll have a discussion about the global housing and homelessness problem but first let me ask you about that title special report. explain to us what that means what you

do and who you report sure i was a. pointed by the un human rights council which is pretty much the highest human rights body within the u.n. system and i am appointed as a kind of global watchdog at least that's how the media presents me and my job is to monitor and assess how people are doing with respect to their right to housing in countries around the world so it's a global mandate and i look at things like homelessness the adequacy of housing the affordability of housing forced evictions those sorts of things my job is also to kind of develop the right to housing to some degree to right thematic reports to help states understand what does the right to housing actually mean and how can it be implemented in a practical way. i also try to hold states accountable to their human rights obligations not an easy task but certainly

a really important one and in this day and age let's start with the basics you talk about the right to housing where is it written down that everyone has a right to housing yet so it's in the universal declaration of human rights for example article twenty six everyone has the right to an adequate standard of living including adequate housing it's an adult human celebrates his seventieth birthday right now that's right exactly so you know if that is the main articulation and i like that articulation because it sits there amidst all of the human rights you know and that's the way i view housing it has tentacles into every other human right practically think about the right to life and security of the person but it's in a whole host of treaties the most recent recent treaty took to come into being the one on persons with disabilities it includes the right to adequate housing it's in an articulation of economic social and cultural rights a treaty of both those rights it's articulated there it's actually one of the most articulated economic and social rights out there so there has been

a lot. of writing in activism on the right to housing the right to adequate house in difficult words that what is adequate who decides what is adequate yeah so it's funny because it's so obvious what might be adequate housing what we say is that under international human rights law and there is a un committee that has talked about this through what they call a general comment that housing is not just about four walls and a roof it is about four walls and a roof but it's not just about that it's about living in a place where you have peace security and most importantly dignity and once you start playing with the idea of dignity well you can imagine what that means it means living in a place with proper sanitation and basic services toilets running water it means living in a place that's close to employment so that you can actually generate an income for

your for your family or house all of it means living close to health care services child care services it means having security of tenure and that's a cornerstone cornerstone of the right to housing in other words you should not be fearful that you're going to lose your home like that. those are that you know the basic tenets of it means living in a place without experiencing discrimination having access to housing without discrimination so adequacy is actually fairly well defined and in this you know right now affordability is a key component of adequate housing and the way affordability is defined is based on what a household income is so it has housing has to be affordable to people based on their actual income not based on what the market can bear you to find it very clearly let's now talk about how many people in the world do not have that now i preparing to talk to you been trying to read all the statistics you are an expert on this i've been trying to get up to speed it seems to me the last time

a really big global served. it was done was a long time ago two thousand and five when they came up with figures of one hundred million homeless worldwide and one point six billion people lacked laffing adequate housing that's some time ago over a decade ago yes as the situation got worse or better yes i mean i suspect the situation has only got worse if i look at my daily reality in my email inbox i can only say that there are so many troubling issues on in the area of housing right now so i think those figures are probably outdated and things have probably got worse we do know for example that approximately nine hundred million people that's a quarter of the world's population are living in informal settlements informal settlements slums that is without all of those elements of adequacy that i was talking about with often without basic services certainly without security of

tenure so i mean it's a huge it's a huge percentage of the world's population right this is a very very urgent and serious matter if you have whatever figures of homelessness and how you define homelessness even if you just look at street homelessness tell me a city you've been to where you haven't seen street homelessness right you talk about these informal settlement. shanty towns that some called him call him because some of the people there see that this is a community and they don't actually want to move from those places to that that's exactly right and one of the things that i find fascinating about informal settlements is the dual nature on the one hand. people are experiencing extreme violations of human rights in those informal settlements or slums right no no toilets and no sanitation i mean the horror of that we can all imagine no showers crumbling structures fear of the vixen all the time so that's on the one hand the reality on the other hand i've visited many informal settlements the vibrancy. in

those places the sense of community the way they will even though they don't have a paved road they will name their streets they will give each house a number they will ensure there's a community center where people can meet and talk and discuss there is a vibrancy there and people do want to remain in their homes of course some people have lived in informal settlements for decades and generations so of course they don't want to leave and in fact under international human rights law that's the standard upgrading should happen in an ensuite two or as we say on site way in other words don't remove people from their homes unless there is absolutely no other option i've been looking at some of the figures or trying to find some of the figures for some of the key countries and obviously the problem is going to be worst in the places where there are more people particularly more people living in urban areas and it's difficult to get the real figures nigeria i've seen estimates

of twenty four point four homeless people estimates in india an official figure of one point seven seven million but then the mess to most of seventy eight million the figures vary widely even here where we are right now we're in new york and the u.s. official figures much smaller than the rest much of up to three point five million homeless do you believe this problem is seriously under reported and if so. you can decide that homeless population is people living rough on the streets and then you're going to get one figure you're going to go around and do a count on a single night how many people do you count on your street that's going to be a small figure you could then say no my definition is on the streets and in shelters so then you're going to get a slightly bigger figure but what about all of those people who are couch surfing living with family friends or relatives etc because they have no other place to go

that's a population that is almost. impossible to measure we know that that in every country that there is that population out there we know that and so the estimates are going to vary widely based on definition i don't think that homelessness has been viewed as the human rights issue that it is the i don't think it's been given the sort of urgency of political will of social policy that it deserves and so i think that's also part of the problem let's talk about the life of someone who's homeless and why the definition whether it's in an informal settlements rushy living on the streets how does it affect someone's life not just not having somewhere to live what other ways to save affect them for example the hells. this is a population that is deeply traumatized you can imagine. a day on the street it would be completely traumatizing for us in light of you know where where or how we're

positioned it might imagine a week on the street imagine a year imagine five years it is a completely traumatizing experience and what we find is that the that experience can actually trigger psychosocial disability people are always like oh the people who are homeless or they're all crazy they're all going to have some psychological problems many many people who hit the streets are completely of sound mind it's the trauma of being on the street that can trigger psycho social disability the trauma of living on the street is what often leads people to do things like drugs right it's to numb the experience i've talked to many people in the united states in particular i was out in california and just saw some harrowing situations people with gainful employment working in hospitals working in animation studios living on the streets and telling me that the trauma of that has

led them to undertake activities they never thought that they would be doing you mentioned life and expectancy one figure so can from the u.k. from the national health service in the u.k. the average homeless person has a life expectancy of forty seven years now if you go back to the wider population in the u.k. you have to go back about one hundred use for that to be the average life expectancy this is shameful isn't it i think it's shameful and you know you gave figures of homeless rates in different countries and you said you know what of course in the bigger countries there's going to be more people who are homeless but the way in which we deal with that sort of an analysis of homelessness is not so much based on population size and ratio but we look at the wealth and resources of a country and then we look at housing and home inadequate housing and. homelessness because of course there's there should be a correlation wealthy nation largest g.d.p.

in the world you might expect to see less homelessness per capita cetera or no homelessness but that's not what we're seeing if you look at north america if you look at europe what are we seeing rising rates of homelessness in the richest countries in the world that to me is where we get into extremely shameful territory extremely shameful why is that how is it acceptable that you know g.d.p. is are increasing all the time hopefully and homelessness is rising all the time so is the main reason that cities as they grow as a nation takes place have become an affordable for most people one of the things is this very new phenomenon we've seen since about two thousand and eight that very special year where we mark the global financial crisis. housing has changed housing has become basically the hottest commodity around and at the same time

housing is supposed to be a human right and so what we have is. investment in housing as a commodity as a place to park capital and grow wealth and that has changed the way in which housing operates it means you know if you think about it if you have investors private equity firms vulture funds buying up paos ing who are who is their principal concern it's their investor and if they're using housing to satisfy their investor interests what do they have to do with that housing if it's rental housing . it's obvious they have to increase their rents so what do governments do about the problem of homelessness because some are only dealing with that part of the problem hungry for example has come up with a new law it's made homelessness effectively a crime it's bound for you to live on the streets they say people should go to

emergency shelters is that going to help a policy like that it's i think it's cruel and i think it's completely misguided and obviously it's out of step with international human rights and human rights obligations it's out of step with the sustainable development goals there are places that are doing some good works in the area of homelessness if you look at the housing first started it is it is which actually sits nicely within a human rights framework the idea of housing first finland is where the model was first developed and it's where it is most successful finland and norway are the only places in europe where we haven't seen an increase in homelessness in the last year. and the housing first model is just that you say we will provide this population with housing first and then we will provide all of the services and supports that those households need in order to make a go of things and that's not time delimited and that's where the success lies in

finland for example so in other words it's not a we'll throw services and supports at you for twelve months and then hate to pull up your socks and make your own way it is services and supports until that household really can be autonomy us and survive and thrive so that is a model that is working on the homelessness front but that doesn't address affordability issues and these bigger macro things that are happening that i that i've touched on you've mentioned your visits you've mentioned your very recent visit to egypt you were allowed to go in many other human rights defenders have not been allowed to visit egypt the government there is true. going to make efforts to provide new housing are you concerned though that they are also trying to move populations away from the areas where they have the luxury. yeah my trip to egypt is very fresh i just got back. i think that the government is making

a concerted effort to deal with some of their housing issues they've prioritized people living in what they call a life threatening situation so you know to close to a railway line underneath power lines that kind of thing underneath rocks that could fall and i think that that's really important obviously we want to save lives . i am a little bit concerned about the model in egypt because it's not people centered and a human rights approach to dealing with in formality or dealing with inadequate housing and i should say forty percent of the population in egypt is living in informal housing or what people call slums. in the human rights approach should be human centered you should really ensure that the population is part of.