9 ms·

Housing is both a human right and a profitable asset, and that’s the problem

40 points by rustoo 5y ago

defaultprimate 5y ago
Slavery is not a human right
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- diputsmonro 5y ago
  Those who work to produce housing would still be compensated, as are all government employees. The money would come from taxes, and taxes would be increased on those who are obscenely wealthy in excess of their needs or realistic aspirations. To make it more apt, if a commodity such as housing is declared to be a human right, perhaps all those who own the commodity in excess of their needs should be taxed heavily to pay for homes/shelters for the unsheltered. It is, after all, their opulent greed that is strangulating the market and making home ownership difficult to begin with.
  - hellojesus 5y ago
    You're describing a public good, not a right. If housing was a right, the government would be compelled to provide it for everyone, not matter their income or wealth, as it would have to be nonexcludable.
    - WitCanStain 5y ago
      This is what Finland has effectively done, and everyone is better off for it. https://www.cbc.ca/radio/sunday/the-sunday-edition-for-january-26-2020-1.5429251/housing-is-a-human-right-how-finland-is-eradicating-homelessness-1.5437402 https://www.cbc.ca/radio/sunday/the-sunday-edition-for-janua...
      - hellojesus 5y ago
        They're calling it a "right", but it does not meet the US definition of a right as it is, definitively, a positive right whereas the US only defines negative rights as human rights. If the US wants to adopt this model as a social program, I would respect the implementation of a strings-free service much more than the strings-attached approach that currently exists. As the article says, eradicating homelessness is more about getting a roof over someone's head than prequalifying them on "good behavior" before doing so. The outcome of the Finnish program is not surprising to me in the least. Regarding the Finnish "right" of housing, I do have this question... I cannot find the actual program documentation. My question is as follows: if I'm Finnish and make $14 billion euros a year, will the gov still provide me free housing?
      - defaultprimate 5y ago
        Yes, we should all strive to emulate tiny, culturally homogeneous de facto ethnostates. Their policies will surely work in gigantic, culturally hyper-heterogeneous nations that already struggle with bureaucratic bloat, public service abuse, and horrid quality of public goods and services.
  - defaultprimate 5y ago
    So then it's not a right. It requires compelled labor of yourself or someone else, not something you are granted simply for existing that can be taken away. Chattel slaves were compensated with a roof over their head, food, facilities. All their needs were met at the hands of the wealthy. All they had to do in return was work. After all, their owner was entitled to their labor by virtue of paying for them and meeting their needs. Surely the state would never utilize this same reasoning on a populace that's wholly dependent on its provisions. Who determines need? Who determines excess? We don't need restaurants, entertainment, video games, etc. We should just eat nutritionally complete kibble for humans, and all work solely to ensure everyone else's needs are met. > It is, after all, their opulent greed that is strangulating the market and making home ownership difficult to begin with. Prove it. Spoiler: you can't.
_448 5y ago
Education and Healthcare should be a human right. Once people have good education and health, then they should earn everything else (including housing). Otherwise everthing becomes free. I agree that housing has become an investment, which should be curbed. People should be prevented or taxed heavily if they buy second house. This will give the younger generation a chance to buy their first home.
- klyrs 5y ago
  Sorry, but I think you've got that backwards. Without food and housing, people don't have the energy to pursue education in any meaningful way, and their healthcare will be more complicated.
- maxsilver 5y ago
  >Once people have good education and health, then they should earn everything else (including housing). How can you possibly have "good health" without also ensuring housing? Isn't it kind of impossible to be truly healthy if you are homeless.
ALittleLight 5y ago
Food is a human right and a commodity sold for profit.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- cool_dude85 5y ago
  I think this kind of dual relationship can only hold until the two come into conflict for a large group of people. There's no issue (except philosophically) if food is a commodity that costs 1 penny per lifetime to eat. It's only when many people face being deprived of their right to eat due to its status as a commodity. That's when you see revolution, insurrection, mob violence, all the rest. Housing isn't there yet certainly, but who knows how far off it might be.
- anm89 5y ago
  Tell that to everyone who died of starvation last year. I guess they didn't get the memo. If only they had known that they had a right to food all their problems would have vanished!
papaplitty 5y ago
People love to say everything is a "human right" - IMO human rights should delineate what you can't be deprived of - not what you have the "right" to force others to provide to you if you do not have the capacity to be self sufficient
- heyitsguay 5y ago
  There is no possible delineation. Anything you can't be deprived of is a thing that others are forced to provide you under state compulsion. What falls under that category is up to social consensus, and is subject to change and debate, as we're seeing with housing now in response to skyrocketing prices and the perverse incentives of the prominence of a house as a reliable investment vehicle.
  - dabbledash 5y ago
    >> Anything you can't be deprived of is a thing that others are forced to provide you under state compulsion. The state can’t take away my guns. The state doesn’t have to buy me any guns.
    - anm89 5y ago
      Right. Not only is it not complicated, it couldn't be any more simple.
  - anm89 5y ago
    Absolutely not, the delineation is dead simple. If someone else gets an obligation because of my right it's not a right. My right to own a gun, have free speech, against self incriminating, or against unlawful search and seizure require Absolutely no action on any person's part but mine besides the court to uphold them (which is true of all systems of rights. Having a court does not negate any of this). The people who wrote the bill of rights were very aware of this delineation because they stayed exclusively on one side of it. So you can disagree but to say the idea simply doesn't exist is nonsense.
    - 5y ago
BaconPackets 5y ago
I'm a Canadian living in oven of our traditionnaly low cost city, Montréal. Over the past few months, I've seen the market explode wat put of reach of our average salary. Housing should be a national interest and something that we work to make as obtainable by the largest portion of our citizens. Owning multiple houses and flipping to keep the market surging should not be legal.
- klyrs 5y ago
  I'm not surprised to see this happening. Quite a few friends of mine have moved to Montreal, precisely because they couldn't afford to live in Vancouver. I know folks in Toronto who have witnessed the same. A city can only absorb so much of the country's supply problem until it's overwhelmed by demand -- and then it turns into a "hot market" with all the drawbacks that entails.
  - hellojesus 5y ago
    The people moving in these examples are doing precisely what they should be: moving to somewhere they can afford. They've been priced out of the market, and that's okay. This process is exactly what grows populations in other cities. Without private property ownership, the entire rental market would cease to exist. Often people purchase homes in disrepair, fix them up, and rent them out. The rental income is precisely what incentivizes this process. If there was no yield, people wouldn't do this and there would be even less housing available. Anecdotally, I believe in Amsterdam there are restrictions such as a house can't remain vacant for more than x months. There may be some merit to that, but I still really dislike it. It basically says "you don't own your private property".
bettyx1138 5y ago
a right implies it would be enforceable in some way. housing should be a human right imho. sadly, it's not a right in the US and it's gotten worse with every decade i've been alive. it's an obscenely expensive commodity out of reach by many, even working people, and those who find themselves not 100% covered by their US health insurance who go broke. non-profits and government subsidizing housing help a miniscule amount of people. i'd love to pack up and leave the US and move to northern europe or switzerland but it's easier said than done especially when you have no family and friends there. i've tried moving away twice. it became too lonely and in one case too much driving required. any friends and family group in northern europe or switzerland want to "adopt" me into their social group? i'm financially independent and but it takes more than that to pack up and move. :)
- nathanvanfleet 5y ago
  Why do you think it's not enforceable? You can prevent any kind of house ownership or change incentives with taxation. Random example: Taxing non-primary residences. Taxing rental income etc.
  - anm89 5y ago
    Do you honestly even believe your own words? Right now SF has less houses then people. Sure that could be fixed over some time but how do you enforce that right tomorrow? If my rights only maybe eventually exist in the future, they don't sound much like rights.
anm89 5y ago
I don't feel that housing is a human right. In fact I don't believe it is even possible for housing to be a human right. Human rights cannot be rights for someone else to build or do something for you, because it inherently causes a restriction or obligation to someone else. Also it's possible that reality simply says the right cannot be provided, and reality tends to beat policy. For example if there are twice as many people who need housing as available houses, no amount of claiming that housing is a right is going to overcome the underlying reality. In fact this damages the whole idea of rights because a right should not be able to be denied but in this case this right exists "while supplies last". That's a goal not a right. My free speech doesn't exist while supplies last. It doesn't require anyone to do anything for me to exercise it. It's simply the right I'm given as a human. If someone violates it a court should give me recourse but no one is obligated to do anything on my behalf. I understand a lot of people disagree with this line of thinking but I really think these unprovidable rights do more damage to the idea of human rights then the benefit. This isn't a rant against people having access to affordable housing. I support that goal but it takes careful planning and a lot of hard work. Simply calling it a right and leaving the details for someone else to solve achieves nothing.
- financetechbro 5y ago
  This is in interesting take. Never thought about it like that
  - anm89 5y ago
    For a deeper dive on this theory take a look at: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_and_positive_rights https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_and_positive_rights Basically my belief is that positive rights should be labeled as goals whereas only negative rights can be called true rights
- DarylZero 5y ago
  > Human rights cannot be rights for someone else to build or do something for you, because it inherently causes a restriction or obligation to someone else. One person's right is always another person's obligation. There is no other way to have a meaningful right of any kind. > Also it's possible that reality simply says the right cannot be provided, and reality tends to beat policy. For example if there are twice as many people who need housing as available houses, no amount of claiming that housing is a right is going to overcome the underlying reality. This is equally true about all other rights. For example, there may be inadequate resources to enforce a right against being murdered. In a sense, as long as there still are murders, then this is actually is the case. However, in the housing case, it's counterfactual. There are no non-social resource constraints. Homeless people aren't even allowed to set up their own tents. It's a cruel kind of gaslighting to suggest there are inherent resource limits when we can all watch videos of cops slashing those tents and evicting entire encampments. It's just not reality. Bringing that kind of counterfactual unreality into a political discussion of a stark situation is not being good to the people affected.
aaron695 5y ago
Housing is not a human right. Shelter is a human right. Normal garbage how people what a cool apartment downtown in large cosmopolitan cities, and quite evilly abuse the concept of what human rights are to get it.

40 points by rustoo 5y ago

defaultprimate 5y ago

Slavery is not a human right

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
diputsmonro 5y ago
Those who work to produce housing would still be compensated, as are all government employees. The money would come from taxes, and taxes would be increased on those who are obscenely wealthy in excess of their needs or realistic aspirations. To make it more apt, if a commodity such as housing is declared to be a human right, perhaps all those who own the commodity in excess of their needs should be taxed heavily to pay for homes/shelters for the unsheltered. It is, after all, their opulent greed that is strangulating the market and making home ownership difficult to begin with.
- hellojesus 5y ago
  You're describing a public good, not a right. If housing was a right, the government would be compelled to provide it for everyone, not matter their income or wealth, as it would have to be nonexcludable.
  - WitCanStain 5y ago
    This is what Finland has effectively done, and everyone is better off for it. https://www.cbc.ca/radio/sunday/the-sunday-edition-for-january-26-2020-1.5429251/housing-is-a-human-right-how-finland-is-eradicating-homelessness-1.5437402 https://www.cbc.ca/radio/sunday/the-sunday-edition-for-janua...
    - hellojesus 5y ago
      They're calling it a "right", but it does not meet the US definition of a right as it is, definitively, a positive right whereas the US only defines negative rights as human rights. If the US wants to adopt this model as a social program, I would respect the implementation of a strings-free service much more than the strings-attached approach that currently exists. As the article says, eradicating homelessness is more about getting a roof over someone's head than prequalifying them on "good behavior" before doing so. The outcome of the Finnish program is not surprising to me in the least. Regarding the Finnish "right" of housing, I do have this question... I cannot find the actual program documentation. My question is as follows: if I'm Finnish and make $14 billion euros a year, will the gov still provide me free housing?
    - defaultprimate 5y ago
      Yes, we should all strive to emulate tiny, culturally homogeneous de facto ethnostates. Their policies will surely work in gigantic, culturally hyper-heterogeneous nations that already struggle with bureaucratic bloat, public service abuse, and horrid quality of public goods and services.
- defaultprimate 5y ago
  So then it's not a right. It requires compelled labor of yourself or someone else, not something you are granted simply for existing that can be taken away. Chattel slaves were compensated with a roof over their head, food, facilities. All their needs were met at the hands of the wealthy. All they had to do in return was work. After all, their owner was entitled to their labor by virtue of paying for them and meeting their needs. Surely the state would never utilize this same reasoning on a populace that's wholly dependent on its provisions. Who determines need? Who determines excess? We don't need restaurants, entertainment, video games, etc. We should just eat nutritionally complete kibble for humans, and all work solely to ensure everyone else's needs are met. > It is, after all, their opulent greed that is strangulating the market and making home ownership difficult to begin with. Prove it. Spoiler: you can't.

_448 5y ago

Education and Healthcare should be a human right. Once people have good education and health, then they should earn everything else (including housing). Otherwise everthing becomes free. I agree that housing has become an investment, which should be curbed. People should be prevented or taxed heavily if they buy second house. This will give the younger generation a chance to buy their first home.

klyrs 5y ago
Sorry, but I think you've got that backwards. Without food and housing, people don't have the energy to pursue education in any meaningful way, and their healthcare will be more complicated.
maxsilver 5y ago
>Once people have good education and health, then they should earn everything else (including housing). How can you possibly have "good health" without also ensuring housing? Isn't it kind of impossible to be truly healthy if you are homeless.

ALittleLight 5y ago

Food is a human right and a commodity sold for profit.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
cool_dude85 5y ago
I think this kind of dual relationship can only hold until the two come into conflict for a large group of people. There's no issue (except philosophically) if food is a commodity that costs 1 penny per lifetime to eat. It's only when many people face being deprived of their right to eat due to its status as a commodity. That's when you see revolution, insurrection, mob violence, all the rest. Housing isn't there yet certainly, but who knows how far off it might be.
anm89 5y ago
Tell that to everyone who died of starvation last year. I guess they didn't get the memo. If only they had known that they had a right to food all their problems would have vanished!

papaplitty 5y ago

People love to say everything is a "human right" - IMO human rights should delineate what you can't be deprived of - not what you have the "right" to force others to provide to you if you do not have the capacity to be self sufficient

heyitsguay 5y ago
There is no possible delineation. Anything you can't be deprived of is a thing that others are forced to provide you under state compulsion. What falls under that category is up to social consensus, and is subject to change and debate, as we're seeing with housing now in response to skyrocketing prices and the perverse incentives of the prominence of a house as a reliable investment vehicle.
- dabbledash 5y ago
  >> Anything you can't be deprived of is a thing that others are forced to provide you under state compulsion. The state can’t take away my guns. The state doesn’t have to buy me any guns.
  - anm89 5y ago
    Right. Not only is it not complicated, it couldn't be any more simple.
- anm89 5y ago
  Absolutely not, the delineation is dead simple. If someone else gets an obligation because of my right it's not a right. My right to own a gun, have free speech, against self incriminating, or against unlawful search and seizure require Absolutely no action on any person's part but mine besides the court to uphold them (which is true of all systems of rights. Having a court does not negate any of this). The people who wrote the bill of rights were very aware of this delineation because they stayed exclusively on one side of it. So you can disagree but to say the idea simply doesn't exist is nonsense.
  - 5y ago

BaconPackets 5y ago

I'm a Canadian living in oven of our traditionnaly low cost city, Montréal. Over the past few months, I've seen the market explode wat put of reach of our average salary. Housing should be a national interest and something that we work to make as obtainable by the largest portion of our citizens. Owning multiple houses and flipping to keep the market surging should not be legal.

klyrs 5y ago
I'm not surprised to see this happening. Quite a few friends of mine have moved to Montreal, precisely because they couldn't afford to live in Vancouver. I know folks in Toronto who have witnessed the same. A city can only absorb so much of the country's supply problem until it's overwhelmed by demand -- and then it turns into a "hot market" with all the drawbacks that entails.
- hellojesus 5y ago
  The people moving in these examples are doing precisely what they should be: moving to somewhere they can afford. They've been priced out of the market, and that's okay. This process is exactly what grows populations in other cities. Without private property ownership, the entire rental market would cease to exist. Often people purchase homes in disrepair, fix them up, and rent them out. The rental income is precisely what incentivizes this process. If there was no yield, people wouldn't do this and there would be even less housing available. Anecdotally, I believe in Amsterdam there are restrictions such as a house can't remain vacant for more than x months. There may be some merit to that, but I still really dislike it. It basically says "you don't own your private property".

bettyx1138 5y ago

a right implies it would be enforceable in some way. housing should be a human right imho. sadly, it's not a right in the US and it's gotten worse with every decade i've been alive. it's an obscenely expensive commodity out of reach by many, even working people, and those who find themselves not 100% covered by their US health insurance who go broke. non-profits and government subsidizing housing help a miniscule amount of people. i'd love to pack up and leave the US and move to northern europe or switzerland but it's easier said than done especially when you have no family and friends there. i've tried moving away twice. it became too lonely and in one case too much driving required. any friends and family group in northern europe or switzerland want to "adopt" me into their social group? i'm financially independent and but it takes more than that to pack up and move. :)

nathanvanfleet 5y ago
Why do you think it's not enforceable? You can prevent any kind of house ownership or change incentives with taxation. Random example: Taxing non-primary residences. Taxing rental income etc.
- anm89 5y ago
  Do you honestly even believe your own words? Right now SF has less houses then people. Sure that could be fixed over some time but how do you enforce that right tomorrow? If my rights only maybe eventually exist in the future, they don't sound much like rights.

anm89 5y ago

I don't feel that housing is a human right. In fact I don't believe it is even possible for housing to be a human right. Human rights cannot be rights for someone else to build or do something for you, because it inherently causes a restriction or obligation to someone else. Also it's possible that reality simply says the right cannot be provided, and reality tends to beat policy. For example if there are twice as many people who need housing as available houses, no amount of claiming that housing is a right is going to overcome the underlying reality. In fact this damages the whole idea of rights because a right should not be able to be denied but in this case this right exists "while supplies last". That's a goal not a right. My free speech doesn't exist while supplies last. It doesn't require anyone to do anything for me to exercise it. It's simply the right I'm given as a human. If someone violates it a court should give me recourse but no one is obligated to do anything on my behalf. I understand a lot of people disagree with this line of thinking but I really think these unprovidable rights do more damage to the idea of human rights then the benefit. This isn't a rant against people having access to affordable housing. I support that goal but it takes careful planning and a lot of hard work. Simply calling it a right and leaving the details for someone else to solve achieves nothing.

financetechbro 5y ago
This is in interesting take. Never thought about it like that
- anm89 5y ago
  For a deeper dive on this theory take a look at: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_and_positive_rights https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_and_positive_rights Basically my belief is that positive rights should be labeled as goals whereas only negative rights can be called true rights
DarylZero 5y ago
> Human rights cannot be rights for someone else to build or do something for you, because it inherently causes a restriction or obligation to someone else. One person's right is always another person's obligation. There is no other way to have a meaningful right of any kind. > Also it's possible that reality simply says the right cannot be provided, and reality tends to beat policy. For example if there are twice as many people who need housing as available houses, no amount of claiming that housing is a right is going to overcome the underlying reality. This is equally true about all other rights. For example, there may be inadequate resources to enforce a right against being murdered. In a sense, as long as there still are murders, then this is actually is the case. However, in the housing case, it's counterfactual. There are no non-social resource constraints. Homeless people aren't even allowed to set up their own tents. It's a cruel kind of gaslighting to suggest there are inherent resource limits when we can all watch videos of cops slashing those tents and evicting entire encampments. It's just not reality. Bringing that kind of counterfactual unreality into a political discussion of a stark situation is not being good to the people affected.

aaron695 5y ago

Housing is not a human right. Shelter is a human right. Normal garbage how people what a cool apartment downtown in large cosmopolitan cities, and quite evilly abuse the concept of what human rights are to get it.