Farzana Choudhury's Churchill Fellowship project, titled 'empowering people facing poverty through social and housing status rights-based models', examines the application of laws that prohibit discrimination against people facing poverty and homelessness. In 2017 the ACT became the first and only Australian jurisdiction to make accommodation status and employment status discrimination unlawful. Given Australia's growing homelessness crisis this reform was timely. Although these laws appear to be a positive addition to the ACT discrimination law regime, they apply to a small proportion of Australia's population. Whether similar laws should be advocated for across Australia is unclear based on the ACT experience. Farzana's Fellowship explores how countries with a history of poverty discrimination laws have advocated for and utilised such laws in practice.
Farzana spent 8 weeks in 2022 in New Zealand, Ireland, Canada, the United States and the United Kingdom investigating how
countries with poverty discrimination laws (e.g. laws that prohibit discrimination based on housing status, receipt of government benefits, and social disadvantage), have used these laws to protect the rights of some of the most disadvantaged members of the community.
View the recording of Farzana’s Report Launch webinar hosted Community Legal Centres Australia via the video below or by clicking here to open a new window.
Fellow
