As with all positive rights, I deeply disagree with the idea that housing is a human right, because it means someone is obligated (perhaps even enslaved) to provide you that right.
In re declaring something a “human right”, presumably to be provided by the government, the question should always be asked: “are you prepared to use violence to take the item in question to give it to your intended recipient?“
The process of identifying an expanding universe of "human rights" seems to have become a growth industry. This tendency has diluted the impact of the core rights that the original advocates for individual human dignity promoted. Subtle distinctions in language do matter. "Rights" too easily elide into "entitlements". Restoring focus on human "liberties" should be the objective. Freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of religious observation etc are universal and indivisible human rights that all can enjoy without restricting the liberties of others or imposing specific costs upon them. Those who advocate specifc individual cosmic entitlements to housing, education etc are seeking to elevate mundane policy matters to a higher plane, no doubt in order to advance particular policies becaue they all necessitate transfers of resources. At the end of the day, housing outcomes are the result of complex and diverse decisions as to the allocation of scarce resources. To the extent that these are driven, on the one hand, by markets and, on the other hand, by planning and redistributive policy (and, if so, in what manner and to what extent) is surely just part of the argey-bargey of the political process.
No one, even on the left, believes in a literal right to housing, or health care, or any specific commodity or service. I could explain that, but maybe I'd better write it up myself instead.
During my time in middle school and high school, I have heard many arguments in favor of government welfare. Until I was 16, I didn't even know there were people opposing it. These students are lucky to have someone present these arguments to them.
Perhaps we need to clarify what it means to have a "human right".
To me, having a human right to something means no one can deny me that thing just because I'm me. Specifically, no government can make a law forbidding me from having or doing that thing (with all the usual caveats about shouting fire in a crowded theater).
I have a human right to defend myself. No one can say I'm not allowed to fight back when threatened.
What I don't have is a right to demand someone give me a knife (or running shoes so I can escape).
From a housing perspective, I do have a right to housing. No one can say I can't buy that house because I have blue eyes or because I prefer limited government. What that doesn't mean is I don't have a right to demand anyone else provide me with a house.
I think Burke would be helpful here: “the pretended rights of these theorists are all extremes; and in a proportion as they are metaphysically true, they are morally and politically false”. And “what is the use of discussing a man’s abstract right to food or medicine? The question is upon the method of procuring and administering them.”
I think a more general way to phrase an objection is the following.
Of course, we all agree that, other things being equal it's better for someone to have the option of shelter than not. However, that's true of everything and either it's pretty meaningless to say that housing is a right or it demands we prioritize it over other desierable goods.
If we take seriously the idea that the option of shelter is a right does that mean we can't trade off some degree of lack of housing against other important goods like health and happiness? Does that mean India shouldn't be subsidizing toliets until everyone there has some kind of housing?
Even a standard liberal should find that worrying.
And the only real solution is... Geolibertarianism. Houses are man-made. My right to have a house would force another to build me one. But earth is not man-made. If we admit that people are entitled to their place on earth, affordable houses will get available in libertarian ways.
I think we have to accept that most people are willing to answer yes to that question when "basic needs" are in question. I state this as an empirical observation of voter attitudes, not a moral judgement.
So ultimately it ends up coming down to:
1) What is a basic need?
2) Is the person "deserving" of that basic need?
3) Can the state afford it?
"What is the best way to provide for this basic need" is a different question.
So you might get people to say "someone who doesn't work doesn't have a basic right to housing" or "drug addicts shouldn't have housing" or "the right to housing doesn't mean the right to "fancy" housing or housing in the best neighborhoods.
But once you've lost the "basic needs" argument, your just talking about #2 and #3.
I'm a heartless bastard and don't think the economically useless deserve shelter if they can't afford it, but I'm not the median voter.
Honestly, if housing simply meant four walls and a roof in cheap areas only given out to people that wouldn't wreck it, it would be a less damaging "basic need" then say education or healthcare.
But in practice "housing is a human right" means housing of a certain standard built in expensive areas, often in an inefficient way but would still be very expensive without the government graft.
On a side note, my one experience going through section 8 housing on my bike and the local children chased after me saying "I want that bike, gimme that bike" as they tried to grab me and pull me off the bike presumably to beat me and steal it. The houses were quite nice, brand new, and it was near downtown. If it wasn't section 8 the real estate would have been extremely valuable.
There simply are not such a thing as "rights". It is a fiction humans create when they want some extra rhetorical flourish behind laws/norms. And doesn't mean anything over and above those laws/norms themselves.
Students without an ideological horse to ride will be unfazed by the "Are you willing to use force to take the money to buy the housing" argument.
For one, those students likely don't appreciate the value of money. For another, they will quibble with the concept of force. Democratically enacted laws are characterized as products of consent. Losers submit rather than fight because the chance of winning the next round means the game remains valuable even to the losers.
My touchstone is to ask myself whether the proposed "right" would be recognized by a pre-agricultural hunter/gatherer band. If you pretty much depend on other people - everybody in the tribe has to stick together, work for each other, or fewer will survive - you'll concede them "rights" in the sense that it is "right" for the tribe to invest in that effort, will it help the tribe survive?
We offer the "right to life" and indeed, to not be assaulted, because if you don't protect smaller tribe members from the larger bullying them, the tribe won't hang together, nobody will ever turn their back on another. (I'm doing a very short version of Hobbes' "Leviathan" book: does the provision of a "right" keep *everybody's* life from being nasty,brutish and short?)
If tribe members aren't given the basics of life from the tribe, whether they are sick that week and can't hunt, or not, allows them to contribute later; keeps family and friends of that person integrated with the tribe, rather than pulling away their efforts to support their loved one because the tribe will not.
In short, nobody in "primitive" hunter/gatherer tribes was starved to death, or left in the cold.
Letting people suffer and have more and more trouble contributing to the common good, is an expensive, stupid waste of resources that only a wealthy "civilization" could contemplate. The "primitives" are too poor to allow such losses.
It should also be conceded as a right by "advanced" societies, because it would pay back in the end, make them stronger. You can leave the morals out of it and use cold profit/loss calculations -as long as you are looking at the full-society picture.
If housing is a human right, does that imply a certain quality of housing to be provided?
Like, does it have to include bathrooms and kitchens? Beds? Electricity? Low levels of noise and light? Does it have to be in a reasonable distance to work, whatever that means? Where do we draw the limit?
As with all positive rights, I deeply disagree with the idea that housing is a human right, because it means someone is obligated (perhaps even enslaved) to provide you that right.
In re declaring something a “human right”, presumably to be provided by the government, the question should always be asked: “are you prepared to use violence to take the item in question to give it to your intended recipient?“
The process of identifying an expanding universe of "human rights" seems to have become a growth industry. This tendency has diluted the impact of the core rights that the original advocates for individual human dignity promoted. Subtle distinctions in language do matter. "Rights" too easily elide into "entitlements". Restoring focus on human "liberties" should be the objective. Freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of religious observation etc are universal and indivisible human rights that all can enjoy without restricting the liberties of others or imposing specific costs upon them. Those who advocate specifc individual cosmic entitlements to housing, education etc are seeking to elevate mundane policy matters to a higher plane, no doubt in order to advance particular policies becaue they all necessitate transfers of resources. At the end of the day, housing outcomes are the result of complex and diverse decisions as to the allocation of scarce resources. To the extent that these are driven, on the one hand, by markets and, on the other hand, by planning and redistributive policy (and, if so, in what manner and to what extent) is surely just part of the argey-bargey of the political process.
No one, even on the left, believes in a literal right to housing, or health care, or any specific commodity or service. I could explain that, but maybe I'd better write it up myself instead.
During my time in middle school and high school, I have heard many arguments in favor of government welfare. Until I was 16, I didn't even know there were people opposing it. These students are lucky to have someone present these arguments to them.
Perhaps we need to clarify what it means to have a "human right".
To me, having a human right to something means no one can deny me that thing just because I'm me. Specifically, no government can make a law forbidding me from having or doing that thing (with all the usual caveats about shouting fire in a crowded theater).
I have a human right to defend myself. No one can say I'm not allowed to fight back when threatened.
What I don't have is a right to demand someone give me a knife (or running shoes so I can escape).
From a housing perspective, I do have a right to housing. No one can say I can't buy that house because I have blue eyes or because I prefer limited government. What that doesn't mean is I don't have a right to demand anyone else provide me with a house.
No doubt that's what Chris was getting at.
I think Burke would be helpful here: “the pretended rights of these theorists are all extremes; and in a proportion as they are metaphysically true, they are morally and politically false”. And “what is the use of discussing a man’s abstract right to food or medicine? The question is upon the method of procuring and administering them.”
I think a more general way to phrase an objection is the following.
Of course, we all agree that, other things being equal it's better for someone to have the option of shelter than not. However, that's true of everything and either it's pretty meaningless to say that housing is a right or it demands we prioritize it over other desierable goods.
If we take seriously the idea that the option of shelter is a right does that mean we can't trade off some degree of lack of housing against other important goods like health and happiness? Does that mean India shouldn't be subsidizing toliets until everyone there has some kind of housing?
Even a standard liberal should find that worrying.
And the only real solution is... Geolibertarianism. Houses are man-made. My right to have a house would force another to build me one. But earth is not man-made. If we admit that people are entitled to their place on earth, affordable houses will get available in libertarian ways.
I think we have to accept that most people are willing to answer yes to that question when "basic needs" are in question. I state this as an empirical observation of voter attitudes, not a moral judgement.
So ultimately it ends up coming down to:
1) What is a basic need?
2) Is the person "deserving" of that basic need?
3) Can the state afford it?
"What is the best way to provide for this basic need" is a different question.
So you might get people to say "someone who doesn't work doesn't have a basic right to housing" or "drug addicts shouldn't have housing" or "the right to housing doesn't mean the right to "fancy" housing or housing in the best neighborhoods.
But once you've lost the "basic needs" argument, your just talking about #2 and #3.
I'm a heartless bastard and don't think the economically useless deserve shelter if they can't afford it, but I'm not the median voter.
Honestly, if housing simply meant four walls and a roof in cheap areas only given out to people that wouldn't wreck it, it would be a less damaging "basic need" then say education or healthcare.
But in practice "housing is a human right" means housing of a certain standard built in expensive areas, often in an inefficient way but would still be very expensive without the government graft.
On a side note, my one experience going through section 8 housing on my bike and the local children chased after me saying "I want that bike, gimme that bike" as they tried to grab me and pull me off the bike presumably to beat me and steal it. The houses were quite nice, brand new, and it was near downtown. If it wasn't section 8 the real estate would have been extremely valuable.
There simply are not such a thing as "rights". It is a fiction humans create when they want some extra rhetorical flourish behind laws/norms. And doesn't mean anything over and above those laws/norms themselves.
Students without an ideological horse to ride will be unfazed by the "Are you willing to use force to take the money to buy the housing" argument.
For one, those students likely don't appreciate the value of money. For another, they will quibble with the concept of force. Democratically enacted laws are characterized as products of consent. Losers submit rather than fight because the chance of winning the next round means the game remains valuable even to the losers.
This guy says that ensuring positive rights involves the violation of negative rights. Interesting: https://boriquagato.substack.com/p/fundamental-humans-rights-unless
This guy says that ensuring positive rights involves the violation of negative rights. Interesting: https://boriquagato.substack.com/p/fundamental-humans-rights-unless
My touchstone is to ask myself whether the proposed "right" would be recognized by a pre-agricultural hunter/gatherer band. If you pretty much depend on other people - everybody in the tribe has to stick together, work for each other, or fewer will survive - you'll concede them "rights" in the sense that it is "right" for the tribe to invest in that effort, will it help the tribe survive?
We offer the "right to life" and indeed, to not be assaulted, because if you don't protect smaller tribe members from the larger bullying them, the tribe won't hang together, nobody will ever turn their back on another. (I'm doing a very short version of Hobbes' "Leviathan" book: does the provision of a "right" keep *everybody's* life from being nasty,brutish and short?)
If tribe members aren't given the basics of life from the tribe, whether they are sick that week and can't hunt, or not, allows them to contribute later; keeps family and friends of that person integrated with the tribe, rather than pulling away their efforts to support their loved one because the tribe will not.
In short, nobody in "primitive" hunter/gatherer tribes was starved to death, or left in the cold.
Letting people suffer and have more and more trouble contributing to the common good, is an expensive, stupid waste of resources that only a wealthy "civilization" could contemplate. The "primitives" are too poor to allow such losses.
It should also be conceded as a right by "advanced" societies, because it would pay back in the end, make them stronger. You can leave the morals out of it and use cold profit/loss calculations -as long as you are looking at the full-society picture.
If housing is a human right, does that imply a certain quality of housing to be provided?
Like, does it have to include bathrooms and kitchens? Beds? Electricity? Low levels of noise and light? Does it have to be in a reasonable distance to work, whatever that means? Where do we draw the limit?