If someone needs shelter, what's to stop them from locating a suitable bit of land, scrounging up materials, and constructing a dwelling, through their own ener

If someone needs shelter, what's to stop them from locating a suitable bit of land, scrounging up materials, and constructing a dwelling, through their own energy and ingenuity? Many people try this, but it is the government which stops them, sending police officers and sanitation workers out to "clean up" the "illegal encampment" and remove it from the "public park" or "highway right-of-way" where it was located. We can see that housing is a right in the same way that freedom from unreasonable search is a right: it is a limit on what the government can do to you. If shelter is a basic right, that means the government cannot force you to be homeless. A government assumes an obligation to provide housing for its citizens by interfering with their natural ability to provide it for themselves. It is the government which defines the idea of private land ownership, the government which hires police to enforce property boundaries, the government which imposes property taxes, the government which regulates use of public land, the government which enacts zoning codes, the government which requires building permits. If someone cannot make it through this gauntlet, we cannot demand that they simply lay down and die: government created the problem, so government must solve it. Accepting the existence of shantytowns is one solution; subsidized public housing is another.