Art & the Right to Housing

Guaranteeing legal protection against forced eviction, harassment, and other threats.

Home Shouldn't Depend on a Job by Amandatron5000Phd, Red Line Service artist

In Home Shouldn’t Depend on a Job, Amandatron5000Phd explores the precarity with which most people in the U.S. live – a paycheck, medical emergency, or other crisis away from houselessness.  

Red Line Service is a community of artists with lived experience of being unhoused - for more information: Red Line Service

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Do the Math by Shay Jones, Red Line Service artist

Jones makes the simple and compelling argument that housing costs the taxpayer less than criminalizing houselessness.  

Red Line Service is a community of artists with lived experience of being unhoused - for more information: Red Line Service

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None of Us Are Home Until All of Us Are Home, Red Line Service artists

None of Us Are Home Until All of Us Are Home: Suggests that a home is as vital as a beating heart, emphasizing that our communal health relies on everyone taking responsibility to ensure housing for all.

Red Line Service is a community of artists with lived experience of being unhoused - for more information: Red Line Service

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(Un)Wanted for the Crime of Needing Rest by Mercela Okeke, Red Line Service artist

Inspired by vintage wanted notices of the Wild West, (Un)Wanted for the Crime of Needing Rest, comments powerfully on the criminalization of everyday functions like sleeping, when these functions take place in public. Instead of addressing the lack of affordable housing units, laws like this punish individuals, leaving the inequities of the housing system in place.

Red Line Service is a community of artists with lived experience of being unhoused - for more information: Red Line Service

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Is My Pain Your Gain by Alexus Wilson, Red Line Service artist

Alexus Wilson, in addition to being a talented visual artist, is also a poet and performer. In Is My Pain Your Gain, the poem and image work together to describe the emotional cost of being unhoused, unrecognized and unvalued.

Red Line Service is a community of artists with lived experience of being unhoused - for more information: Red Line Service

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Impact of Poverty on the Brain by Marketta Sims, Red Line Service artist

Sims addresses the long-term health impacts of being without housing. The constant fatigue – what she calls the fuzziness – as if life is being viewed through a cloud, the anxiety of having to find the next meal, the condition of being unsafe as one’s normal state.

Red Line Service is a community of artists with lived experience of being unhoused - for more information: Red Line Service

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Prioritizing disadvantaged groups and ensuring they have full and sustainable access to adequate housing.

A Home Changes Everything by Tina F, Red Line Service artist

Tina F brings to the fore the way housing changes everything. Without it, everything is harder: working, focusing on mental health, focusing on physical well-being, building relationships, and feeling a sense of belonging, to name a few of the barriers that rob people experiencing houselessness of humanity.  

Red Line Service is a community of artists with lived experience of being unhoused - for more information: Red Line Service

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Red Tape, by Dave Scott, Red Line Service artist

Red Tape points to the enormous barriers for people seeking affordable housing in the U.S., including long waitlists, restrictions on the application process, hurdles to qualifying, as well as the proscriptive rules of management, and lack of recourse for subpar accommodations, all of which make it difficult to work, live and thrive.  

Red Line Service is a community of artists with lived experience of being unhoused - for more information: Red Line Service

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Never-Ending Lottery I and Never-Ending Lottery II, by Tina F, Red Line Service artist

In her pendant, Never-Ending Lottery I and Never-Ending Lottery II, Tina F demonstrates the contingent, arbitrary, chance-based system of securing affordable housing in the U.S. It also points to the exhaustion of the search process itself.

Red Line Service is a community of artists with lived experience of being unhoused - for more information: Red Line Service

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Change the Game by Dave Scott, Red Line Service artist

Change the Game explores the fundamental tension between seeing housing as a real estate, income-generating opportunity, and seeing it as a human right. It asks us to consider the barriers for people seeking housing, and what it would look like if we prioritized people over profit.  

Red Line Service is a community of artists with lived experience of being unhoused - for more information: Red Line Service

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He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother by Deborah Awwad, Red Line Service artist

Awwad is a talented visual artist and singer. Here she combines her two loves by using the famous 1969 song by the Hollies, He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother (recorded a year later by Neil Diamond) to think about why particularly disadvantaged groups, here a senior who is also a Vietnam veteran, is living on the street. The beauty of the solidarity expressed here, by a disabled artist living with housing and food insecurity, is a call to action for everyone to care for one another.

Red Line Service is a community of artists with lived experience of being unhoused - for more information: Red Line Service

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Accessible Housing is Out of Order by Deborah Awwad, Red Line Service artist

Deborah Awwad tackles the problem of accessibility in high rise subsidized housing, when there are insufficient funds for maintaining infrastructure, like elevators.

Red Line Service is a community of artists with lived experience of being unhoused - for more information: Red Line Service

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The Keys to Adequate Housing by Marketta Sims, Red Line Service artist

Sims identifies the factors that have served as barriers to her being able to secure and retain adequate housing. These hew closely to the seven dimensions of the UN Human Right to Adequate Housing.

Red Line Service is a community of artists with lived experience of being unhoused - for more information: Red Line Service

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Keeping the financial costs of housing to a level where the satisfaction of other basic needs is not threatened or compromised.

Diminishing Housing Affordability by Hannah Smaglis

The canvas is divided into sections, each representing the various living expenses individuals need to spread their income between every month. As housing costs increase, it becomes more and more difficult for individuals to afford the other resources that are required for their survival.

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Wheel of Affordable Housing by Efren Paderes, Red Line Service artist

Wheel of Affordable Housing evokes a popular game show to highlight the random, luck-based system of securing affordable housing in the U.S. and the reality of being waitlisted for decades.  

Red Line Service is a community of artists with lived experience of being unhoused - for more information: Red Line Service

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No Affordable Housing is our Discontent/Affordable Housing is our Content by Amandatron5000Phd, Red Line Service artist

Amandatron5000PhD makes a clear, graphic statement of the problem of the lack of affordable housing.

Red Line Service is a community of artists with lived experience of being unhoused - for more information: Red Line Service

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The Myth of the American Dream by Efren Paderes, Red Line Service artist

Paderes' print points to the government failure to help all people achieve a home.   

Red Line Service is a community of artists with lived experience of being unhoused - for more information: Red Line Service

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Raising Minimum Wage by James Lee Williams, Red Line Service artist

Williams’ Raising Minimum Wage focuses on the fundamental three-fold problem of rising housing costs, gutting of public aid, and stagnation of wages in creating the problem of houselessness in the U.S. Williams suggests that raising the minimum wage is one important step to ending houselessness.  

Red Line Service is a community of artists with lived experience of being unhoused - for more information: Red Line Service

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Bare Minimum by Dontay Lockett, Red Line Service artist

As a child, Lockett was raised on other people’s couches, in motels, in shelters and in foster homes. He knows only too well the devastating impacts of inadequate minimum wages on families struggling to keep intact. Using anime techniques, he pictures the way inadequate wages cause even the strongest among us to crack under the economic pressure, breaking apart the family home, and the family unit alongside it.

Red Line Service is a community of artists with lived experience of being unhoused - for more information: Red Line Service

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Payrolled by Tracey Christmas, Red Line Service artist

Tracey Christmas’ central motif is a check on which she shows a simple calculation: that although the UN Human Right to Adequate Housing suggests that a home is affordable when a person pays no more than 30% of their income on rent and utilities, she – along with many others – is paying 75% of her income on housing. This means relying on soup kitchens for food, it means health issues going unaddressed and it means always living with the anxiety of housing precarity.

Red Line Service is a community of artists with lived experience of being unhoused - for more information: Red Line Service

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NO Location, Location, Location by Tracey Christmas, Red Line Service artist

Leveraging a typical real estate slogan, Christmas addresses what it’s like to be without housing when there are so many buildings standing empty, a feature of fast gentrifying areas.

Red Line Service is a community of artists with lived experience of being unhoused - for more information: Red Line Service

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Safe proximity to employment options, health care, food sources, schools, childcare, and other social facilities.

The Centrality of Housing Location by Hannah Smaglis

This piece focuses on the importance of locating housing in an area that provides residents with access to fresh food, health care, and public transportation. As more housing is torn down to erect highways, individuals who rely on public transportation are deprived of access to the essential resources to survive and thrive.

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Facilitating services essential for health, security, and comfort. 

Public Toilets are a Right Not a Priviledge, Red Line Service artists

Public Toilets are a Right Not a Privilege: "In cities where public restrooms are scarce or restricted to paying customers, people experiencing houselessness are forced to use unsuitable spaces as restrooms, affecting the health of the entire community. Controlling basic bodily functions of unhoused people dehumanizes us and fails to address the underlying issue."

Red Line Service is a community of artists with lived experience of being unhoused - for more information: Red Line Service

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Providing adequate space and protection from cold, damp, heat, rain, wind, and other threats to health and physical safety.

Nature is Not Adequate Shelter, Red Line Service artists

Nature is NOT Adequate Shelter: The trees symbolize the nurturing qualities absent in the systems houseless people encounter, making a powerful plea for housing for all families.

Red Line Service is a community of artists with lived experience of being unhoused - for more information: Red Line Service

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Homeless and I'm Still More Than Your Statistics by Red Line Service artists

Homeless and I'm Still More than Your Statistics: Highlights the inadequacy of housing for those living with housing insecurity. "On the left, a generic infographic person represents dehumanizing statistics. On the right, a child with autism covers his ears because the assigned housing is loud and unsuitable for his needs."

Red Line Service is a community of artists with lived experience of being unhoused - for more information: Red Line Service

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Cry for a Sweet Home, by Nanu, Red Line Service artist

Cry for a Sweet Home is an urgent plea for understanding that people seek basic habitability and a call to action to support the desperate nature of their need.

Red Line Service is a community of artists with lived experience of being unhoused - for more information: Red Line Service

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Abandoned Houses, Abandoned People by Dontay Lockett, Red Line Service artist

Lockett suggests that living in condemned buildings and on the streets, while depending on dumpster diving for necessary sustenance, does not constitute habitability.

Red Line Service is a community of artists with lived experience of being unhoused - for more information: Red Line Service

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How is it Habitable? (Whitey's on the Moon) by Marcela Okeke, Red Line Service artist

Okeke’s personal experience with the health issues surrounding black mold and lead piping points to the fact that habitability is more than just any form of shelter. It must also be safe to be considered adequate.

Red Line Service is a community of artists with lived experience of being unhoused - for more information: Red Line Service

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Housing construction, building materials, and policies that enable the expression of cultural identity and diversity of housing.

Climate Gentrification by Hannah Smaglis

This piece highlights the climate gentrification crisis within Miami. As floods and other severe weather persist from climate change, many developers are seeking to move their real estate from the shorelines further inland. This push inland threatens to displace many communities across Miami, eroding housing accessibility, cultural adequacy, and security of tenure. This piece symbolizes the strength communities bringin coming together to address this problem.

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Housing is a Right by Sam Caldera, Red Line Service artist

Caldera’s Housing is a Right demonstrates the anger and frustration of being marked racially or culturally, and having to give up cultural traditions, practices, and preferences to be considered qualified for housing. 

Red Line Service is a community of artists with lived experience of being unhoused - for more information: Red Line Service

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Perils of Gentrification by Nanu Bengue, Red Line Service artist

Bengue’s sweet evocation of a vibrant neighborhood, rich in cultural diversity, shows what is lost when people lose their homes and are edged out of neighborhoods because of gentrification.

Red Line Service is a community of artists with lived experience of being unhoused - for more information: Red Line Service

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