Here’s Carroll Fife saying it. Here’s Cat Brooks saying it. Here’s Nikki Bas saying it. Here’s Sheng Thao saying it. And, of course, the statement is a common meme in Oakland on social media and in political discourse. But is it true?
Looked at objectively, “housing is a human right” is a perfectly intelligible sentence. It has a subject and a verb and an object. It makes grammatical sense. But so does the sentence “All unicorns have polka dots.” Just because a sentence is objectively logical doesn’t make it true.
And how do we define “human rights” anyway? The U.S. Constitution’s Bill of Rights says nothing about housing as a human right, nor have any subsequent laws. Franklin D. Roosevelt, in his second Inaugural Address (1937) famously remarked, “I see one-third of a nation ill-housed, ill-clad, ill-nourished…” but never did he declare that housing as such was a right for all Americans. (Roosevelt and his wife, Eleanor, did interest themselves in philanthropic attempts to inexpensively house people, but that’s not to say they thought housing was a right.) After the Second World War, the new United Nations, on the other hand, published its “Universal Declaration of Human Rights” in which the General Assembly “proclaimed” 30 rights “to secure their universal and effective recognition and observance.” (Eleanor Roosevelt was a driving force behind the Declaration.) Article 25 stated “Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services…”. But this declaration was aspirational, not legal. It possessed no force of law and in fact was objected to by many observers. “A critique of the UDHR,” one critic observed, “is the tension between different particular cultural, religious and political values and the idea that these can all be represented by a unique universal declaration.”
How does the UDHR strike a balance between desires and absolute values? We all desire that all humans be housed, but that desire cannot be considered an “absolute value” because it’s more akin to a personal belief or opinion than an objectively legal construct, much less one that realistically can be achieved.
It’s clear that, in an ideal world, all human beings would be housed (and clothed, and fed, and medically treated, etc. etc.). One way of viewing what is commonly called “progress” is in terms of to what extent humankind approaches the ideals of universality in housing, clothing, food and healthcare. Certainly the world is better off now, in these respects, than it has been at any point in its long, violent history.
Yet declaring that “housing is a human right,” however idealistic it sounds, does absolutely nothing to move the needle, beyond adding to the cacophony of noise that characterizes political discourse these days. This gets to the essence of why many people object to such broad, sweeping notions. Some unhoused individuals are homeless due to their own moral and behavioral deficiencies (drug abuse, defiance of social norms, criminal conduct). An argument can be made that people who have deliberately chosen lifestyles destined to result in poverty and homelessness do not have the right to be supported by a State in which the vast majority of people work hard to keep a roof over their heads. This is not to deny that many people are homeless due to circumstances beyond their control, such as rent increases. We should help them, to the extent that financial and other resources are available.
But hard-hearted as it may seem, we have to understand a few things. We cannot house all the homeless in America; there are simply too many. Besides, actions have consequences: some people have made terrible life choices, and they are now paying the price. Do hardcore drug addicts have the “right” to housing? What kind of housing? Who pays for it? How long may they remain at the taxpayer’s expense? What kinds of behaviors have we the right to demand of those living in subsidized housing? Should we provide housing to criminal incorrigibles? If “housing is a human right,” do I have the right to a bigger house than I can afford, simply because I want it? These are perfectly sound, reasonable questions; to state merely that “housing is a human right” in the expectation that these questions require no further consideration is both dishonest and unhelpful.
Americans, who are not a hard-hearted people, would like to understand the housing situation in more nuanced ways than homeless advocates are comfortable with. When Americans hear advocates say“housing is a human right,” we sense the contradictions and the impossibilities, and we recoil. It’s not because we hate the homeless; it’s not because we’re Republicans, and it’s not due to white supremacy. It’s because the statement “housing is a human right” isn’t true, and we know it.
Steve Heimoff