During the Holiday Season The National Union of the Homeless comes together across 5 U.S. regions (the South, Appalachia, Midwest, West and the Northeast) to declare: Housing and Healthcare NOW. An End to Genocide and the War Economy! No more death on the streets both here and abroad!
The Homeless Union’s Winter Offensive is a series of synchronized actions and protests that take place from Thanksgiving through Martin Luther King Jr's Birthday in order to highlight the time of year when the poor and homeless experience the most deadly conditions and the highest rates of suicide and death.
We work together to fulfill our mission statement, declaring that “we commit our lives to ending homelessness and poverty and to work tirelessly for the human right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, for social and economic justice for all.”
As our Leader Dr Rev Savina cries “At a time when they sing Peace on Earth our land groans under the weight of injustice!” Again we shout: HOUSING AND HEALTHCARE NOW! NO MORE DEATH ON THE STREETS BOTH HERE AND ABROAD!
As we enter 2026 we are also feeling the deadly effects of the June 28, 2024 Supreme Court decision Grant’s Pass v. Johnson, as well as executive orders by state governors and the President that further criminalize homelessness and poverty. We are seeing an increase in the deadly practice of sweeps and in the incarceration of our homeless communities.
Simultaneously we are facing massive cuts to benefit programs like Medicaid and SNAP. Hospitals continue to close while we build new prisons and forced labor camps for the unhoused and terrorize and imprison undocumented workers. Our nation's military budget nearing one trillion dollars annually. Sixty (60%) percent of the United States population reports they are struggling to make ends meet while the top ten billionaires grew their collective wealth by $698 billion dollars in the last year alone.
We know there's enough food to feed everyone and that there are 24 empty homes for every single individual in need of one while 1000 souls will freeze to death on the streets this year and homelessness and poverty continues to rise at record numbers! We declare NO MORE.
The Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival has shown that poverty is the 4th leading cause of death in the U.S., and 800 people die every day in the richest country that’s ever existed in the history of the world! Our system is FAILING - and we are DYING as a result of a system that puts PROFIT over our lives. We mourn, lift up and honor the names of those we’ve lost.
Join us, the National Union of the Homeless and the Nonviolent Medicaid Army, as we organize to unite our class to end this system that profits from poverty, homelessness and death and to create a society organized around our human rights to health, housing, food and lives of dignity so that we can together thrive, not merely survive.
The heart and soul of the National Union of the Homeless is to commit our lives to ending homelessness and poverty and to work tirelessly for the human right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, for social and economic justice for all. We dedicate ourselves to raising the awareness of our sisters and brothers, to planning a sustained struggle and to building an organization that can obtain freedom through revolutionary perseverance. We pledge to deepen our personal commitment to end all forms of exploitation, racism, sexism, and abuse. True solidarity demands that we create not only the new society, but also the new human being.
The National Union of the Homeless (NUH) originally formed in the late 1980s and early 1990s in response to shifting economic conditions resulting in mass homelessness of families and former workers across our country. The shelter system that is a central part of the nonprofit industrial complex today formed at this time as well. From the shelters, encampments, and abandoned buildings folks came together to fight, speak out and organize against the very conditions that have made them homeless.
At its height, the National Union of the Homeless (NUH) had 25 local chapters and 35,000 members in cities across the United States. Most importantly, it implemented a model of organizing involving the poor and homeless thinking for themselves, speaking for themselves, fighting for themselves and producing from their ranks capable and creative leaders. This was contrary to the prevailing stereotypes and misconceptions about homelessness. Almost twenty years after the decline of the NUH, its history offers important lessons for building a movement to end poverty today, in the midst of continuing concentration of wealth among a few and expanding poverty for many.
Although the NUH went into decline in the early 1990s, a number of its leaders continued organizing for social and economic human rights. The NUH's mission and methods carried on through other organizations, including the Kairos Center, Poor People's Campaign: A National Call For Moral Revival, the University of the Poor, and many others.
In June 2019 organizers from across the country gathered in Washington DC at the Poor People's Campaign: A National Call For Moral Revival's Moral Congress. At this gathering a group of close to 100 organizers voted to form the Committee to Reestablish the NUH.
In 2020 the National Union of the Homeless was reborn. The revitalized NUH has established multiple locals throughout 11 states, we held our first Officer's Trainer School Fall 2019 and we continue to grow throughout the country as we uphold the slogans, legacy and practices of the original NUH; such as "You Only Get What You Are Organized To Take!," "Homeless Not Helpless!," and "Housing Now Not Death On The Streets!"
The NUH then and now is made up of members currently and formerly experiencing homelessness as well as organizers understanding this is a fight for the survival of all the poor and dispossessed in our nation. The power the NUH is proof that we can speak for ourselves, think for ourselves, and organize together to lead not just ourselves but the nation in changing the very system that continues to create homelessness every day in this country
| Location | Name |
|---|---|
| City & County of Albany, NY | Albany Chapter - National Union of the Homeless |
| Elmira, New York | Elmira Union of the Homeless |
| Chicago+ | Illinois Union of the Homeless |
| Philadelphia, Pennsylvania | ACT UP Philly Homeless Union |
| Durham/Raleigh | North Carolina Union of the Homeless |