A/HRC/43/43 Guideline No. 4. Implement comprehensive strategies for the realization of the right to housing 25. The major structural issues giving rise to homelessness, informality and other systemic violations of the right to housing are multidimensional, involving many different areas of policy and programmes and requiring comprehensive plans to effect meaningful change over time. 26. The Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights has emphasized that the obligation to progressively realize the right to housing will almost invariably require the adoption of a national housing strategy. 21 Strategies should be developed in consultation with affected groups, include clearly defined goals, identify the resources to be allocated and clarify responsibilities and a time frame for implementation. 22 27. Most States have not implemented effective strategies to realize the right to housing. Where timelines and goals for outcomes have been identified, often there has been insufficient commitment to meeting them and no meaningful accountability. 28. Implementation measures: (a) Housing strategies must identify the State’s obligations to be realized progressively, based on clear goals and timelines for achieving specific outcomes and the right to adequate housing for all in the shortest possible time; (b) Strategies should provide coherence and coordination in all relevant policy areas, particularly urban planning, land regulation, taxation and finance, social benefits and services; (c) States should establish specific strategies to address obstacles to the right to housing such as discrimination, financialization, speculation, predatory lending, landgrabbing, conflict, forced evictions, environmental degradation and vulnerability to disasters. Strategies adopted should be responsive to persistent and emerging challenges in urban and rural areas, such as spatial injustice and climate change; (d) States should provide for independent monitoring of progress in meeting goals and timelines, establish procedures through which affected communities can identify systemic issues affecting the realization of the right to housing and ensure effective responses.23 Guideline No. 5. Eliminate homelessness in the shortest possible time and stop the criminalization of persons living in homelessness 29. Homelessness is experienced in a number of ways: living on streets or sidewalks, or in makeshift encampments in rural or urban areas, doubling or tripling up with others, or living in overcrowded improvised shelter, unprotected from the elements or without access to water, sanitation or electricity. 30. Homelessness is a profound assault on dignity, social inclusion and the right to life. It is a prima facie violation of the right to housing and violates a number of other human rights in addition to the right to life, including non-discrimination, health, water and sanitation, security of the person and freedom from cruel, degrading and inhuman treatment.24 31. Homeless persons and persons living in informal housing are frequently subject to criminalization, harassment and discriminatory treatment because of their housing status. They are denied access to sanitation facilities, rounded up and driven from communities and subjected to extreme forms of violence. 21 22 23 24 Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, general comment No. 4, para. 12. Ibid. See also A/HRC/37/53. A/HRC/31/54, para. 4. 7