These thoughts on the right to housing were
culled from various email exchanges I had, hence the more informal
style. Because of this, it is not organized as an article or an essay.
Just thought you should know.
Homelessness is New York City and many other
areas is growing and 2004 saw a record number of people in shelters.
The number of homeless children in shelters has grown considerably.
Over 100,000 New Yorkers were housed in a homeless shelter at some point
in 2004.
A solution to this staggering problem is
officially and unambiguously declare housing as a right for all
Americans. In a contained and defined society boasting an abundance of
resources, those within that society ought to be afforded the right of
survival, something that cannot happen without necessities such as food
and shelter. As a right, these necessities cannot merely be granted by
inherent mechanisms in society, such as the support or good will from
the private sector.
In a rich society like America it is possible for
private parties and NGOs to support a huge number of people and,
ideally, eliminate many of the problems involved in homelessness and
hunger. However, the fundamental right to survival needs to be
established as a safety net under a system fueled by exploitation,
racism, and inequality. When our ample resources are monopolized by a
small concentration of people with similar class interests, there cannot
be any “equality of opportunity.” This is doubly true when those
resources are in the hands of those who profit off of the majority who
hire out their labor and produce the goods yet are powerless as a
political/economic entity and do not control the means of production.
Those facing homelessness and poverty are often
urged to “take personal responsibility.” It is clear that those with the
most uphill battles, though, are the ones least equipped to fight it.
Taking responsibility is easier for those with family support, community
support, and community resources. This is not the case for the vast
majority of those who wind up homeless. At no point was there equality
of opportunity. To name one of the many unjust elements that has
propelled homelessness, look at the effects of the War on Drugs:
The number of people, particularly black men,
incarcerated for non-violent crimes is appalling. In 2003, there were
1,678,200 arrests for drug violations in this country. Because of the
War on Drugs, black men are profiled and harassed by the police, are
subject to absurd and draconian “drug free school zone” laws in urban
areas where every block is close to a school, and are unfairly sentenced
with mandatory minimums and unjust penalty ratios like the 100:1
(quantity of powder cocaine to quantity of crack cocaine) ratio. A huge
population is then discriminated against, disenfranchised, and prevented
from attaining decent jobs. The criminal record will also prevent them
from finding housing and, when they do, it is often from a corrupt,
thieving slumlord. This is one of the countless scenarios that can
easily lead to homelessness. Education would probably do a lot more to
help the problem than spending more money on correctional facilities,
but it doesn’t look like that is going to start happening. California
and Florida both spend more money on corrections than they do on higher
education. Because of this system, the number of children in prison is
booming (read more about the problem of the juvenile justice system
here):
Claiming “equality of opportunity” is
preposterous when our guaranteed freedoms are as much a commodity as
anything else that, through market forces, empower a few while
alienating and depriving most. Without adequate resources, the majority
does not have access to those freedoms -- freedom of speech, of course,
is not the freedom to be heard, but being heard is an impossibility when
access to media is so restrictive and exclusive. The same is obviously
true with access to the political arena, not just in terms of who leads,
but also in regard to the basic, fundamental American right of who
votes. These freedoms and liberties that have become meaningless
rhetoric and propaganda have become so largely because they are
impossible concepts without equality. I’ll come back to that slight
digression later.
To guarantee housing as a fundamental right,
policy would have to be conducted locally and smaller units would need
more autonomy—i.e., decentralization resulting in new, autonomous powers
for local councils such as taxation and the enforcement/allocation of
fair housing. When social welfare is debated and conducted only on a
large, federal or state scale, any attempt at redistributing resources
to create a basic foundation of universal subsistence and survival is of
course going to seem impossible and like a bureaucratic disaster that
could very well result in an even more dire situation. But, for the
ruling class, it is important for that perception to exist so concepts
like shelter and subsistence are not publicly considered as universal
human rights and are left out of the political discourse of what is owed
to every American. Many people acknowledge that poverty, among other
things, breeds crime, but poverty is considered broadly. Unreliable and
capricious housing conditions (based on fluctuating economic elements,
but also on the arbitrariness of evictions and the discrimination
pervasive in housing/real estate stemming from large scale attempts at
gentrification) that create the constant looming threat of homelessness
are a huge aspect of crime, especially that which stems from
desperation, community frustration, and extreme uncertainty. This
universal right would indisputably decrease crime, especially violent
crime. If, in addition to the alleviation of landlord abuse and housing
uncertainty, you added an end to unjust police practices, specifically
in regard to the drug war and racial profiling (which, in addition to
being unconstitutional, is completely ineffective), social and economic
conditions would change quickly and significantly. With reliable
housing, businesses would not be as scared of these communities that
seem to be in a constant state of flux and turmoil. It is likely that
investment in the community and employment of those in the community
would create new bases of business and possibly manufacturing around
which community and cultural relations would certainly grow. Crime
within these communities would be minor as envy over personal
possessions (not a small concern in many areas) would decrease and a
cooperative spirit would be fostered, and needed, to secure resources
and maintain a certain quality of life. The first step to guaranteeing
housing as a right is to take measures to ensure that no child or family
is on the streets. A child cannot take responsibility to remove himself
from economic despair; there is no argument that can possibly legitimate
children being homeless and hungry when the resources are clearly there
to prevent it.
Inadequate housing is such a primary cause of
physical and mental health problems that it affects the environment
around it acutely. When a certain group is marginalized, oppressed, and
targeted in society, i.e., poor blacks or immigrants, they are more
likely to wind up homeless. When one is stripped of a home and, by
extension, all privacy, one is stripped of dignity. When certain
groups/classes of people are more likely to be in this situation, it is
injurious to the whole class of people, as the stigma of homelessness is
attached to them. Homelessness is such a visible and public problem
that it poisons the social atmosphere and creates dangerous prejudices
and stereotypes that lead to further marginalization, oppression and
incidents of homelessness. By denying an individual housing, you are
violating his human rights. But the ripple effect is even more
insidious and toxic for a community, for the working class, and for the
cultures that are maligned by prejudice.
The right to housing also has many practical cost
benefit factors that could only positively affect a community.
Substandard housing leads to injuries, diseases, and environmental
conditions that result in malnutrition and exposure to dangerous
elements. All of these are additional costs to society. Substandard
housing is very often overcrowded, causing health problems to quickly
spread. This creates a major problem for the people living there and
for the community, which, most likely, has very limited resources in
providing health care. Public funds that need to be used for these
purposes are diverted from subsidizing improved housing conditions and
programs that could help the people in these communities.
Then there are emergency shelters. These
facilities are very expensive to maintain and provide only immediate
relief. It would be far more cost-efficient to ensure adequate housing
and not have to depend on shelters and services. Given these
cost-benefits and long-term boosts in productivity and community
development, it seems that the only reason to oppose housing as a right
is deeply rooted ideology about supposed values.
There is a reason that much of the support for
homeless advocacy comes from religious groups. The issue is simpler
when viewed through morality or religious values—it is when you infuse
it with democratic or capitalistic propaganda (even though the economic
argument supports housing rights) that the issue is more muddled. The
right to housing is important not just for the practical means of
shelter but for the vast importance that having a home has in society.
The basic effect of homelessness is immobility and little hope of
improvement. Without an address attaining even the most menial job is
extremely difficult. Social and emergency services can’t contact
someone whom they cannot call or write to. How can one take personal
responsibility when every door is closed? Or where there is no door at
all? Homeless people have no doors, metaphorically and literally.
Progressive causes such as universal health care and ending hunger can
stem from the right to housing, as it is such a focus of living,
especially for a family.
Returning to my previous digression that
approached the topic of the structure of society: Arguments about
personal responsibility are just ways of legitimizing inequality through
either utilitarian value, ideas of innovation and progress, or myths
about “work ethic” and mobility. Those who oppose free market
capitalism often offer alternatives that do nothing to ameliorate these
disparities and these oppressive forces. Condemning privatization and
neoliberal global economies in favor of public enterprise market systems
sounds nice philosophically but, like Communism and the WNBA, do not
work in practice. The benefits and the burdens of social labor are
still distributed unfairly but it is justified by public ownership. It
is absurd and inaccurate to see the right to housing and food as
interchangeable with central planning. What is important is that even
within the competitive framework (i.e., a whole structural shift is not
necessary to enable this sort of progress) of a market economy, the
state can and should guarantee housing and it should be done through
public ownership and then through the delegation of public housing
authority to local affiliates (i.e., funding certain nonprofits to
fulfill this role while making them accountable to the state
government.) Rather than central planning, though, these rights would
be ensured by consumers’ councils, workers councils, and possibly
housing councils that possess the necessary economic functions.
Homelessness needs to be treated
as the epidemic it is. When the choice is between living on the streets
or prison, there is something wrong. Real change would be massive and
systemic, but recognizing the immediacy of housing as an inalienable
right is the way to start.