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Housing Is a Human Right
Our nation is running a $1.4 trillion-dollar budget deficit this year. So why is Congress on track to approve more than $1 trillion for "defense" spending, while cutting back services that most countries think of as human rights? Even in the wake of Obama's landmark health-care legislation, our priorities are out of sync with what the public needs.
Consider this: About 3.5 million Americans--including 1.35 million children--are homeless for significant periods of time over the course of a year, according to the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty.
This shouldn’t come as a surprise. Under U.S. law, American citizens don’t have rights to shelter, food, medical care, or a decent old age. Yet these are human rights, and they’re etched into the United Nations’ Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. Albania, Tunisia, Finland, and dozens of other countries have signed on to this document, which of course has gone unratified by the U.S. Senate.
What part of “in accordance with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the ideal of free human beings enjoying freedom from fear and want can only be achieved if conditions are created whereby everyone my enjoy his economic, social and cultural rights, as well as his civil and political rights and freedom” do our lawmakers reject?
Homelessness isn't the only indicator that underscores our mistaken priorities. Experts have estimated that at least 20,000 Americans die each year because they lack health insurance and can't get needed care. And a recent study found that 37 million people in this country sought emergency food assistance from food banks in the Feeding America network last year. That's roughly one in eight Americans.
Meanwhile, our country positions itself as the world’s leading human rights advocate, ignoring many aspects of what the rest of the world considers to be human rights.
For example, the State Department recently published a report that found Cuba to be violating legal and political rights. The report made no reference to Cuba’s success in housing and feeding its people, or providing them with health care.
The skewed policy of focusing on deficiencies in Cuba while ignoring our own glaring lack of substantive rights has characterized every administration for 30 years. Arizona, like many states suffering from reduced revenues, recently slashed its Children’s Health Insurance Program. About 47,000 kids--all poor, of course--now have no medical coverage.
Self-righteous human rights attacks on other countries don’t help mask glaring needs at home, particularly food and shelter for millions.
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Show AllLike 18th century France we may congratulate ourselves for our most equitable laws regarding shelter which forbid the rich - as well as the poor - to sleep under bridges.
Or, in it's modern "Libertarian" US equivalent, the poor as well as the rich enjoy the freedom to sleep under highway overpasses, and sidewalk grates if they wish.
Lately, I've been having trouble getting the Ayn-Rand apologist tunes of "Rush" out of my head.
Some people have told me and would even beg me to consider the Libertarian Party because of their positions on war, drugs, and Constitution. I might have trusted that party on those issues alone but most of the time, that party is too busy fighting for Wall Street and they have been silent about Republican attempts to change state laws to protect corporations over people be it on health care, education, trade, patriotism, jobs, etc... . There may be some nice features about the Libertarian Party but there are also very controversial positions that don't sit well with me and that party can also be inconsistent and silent too often.
Stanley,
I don't mean to offend in any way, but you posts almost always exude a certain political naivete' that suggest that you are pretty young - under 30 or so, right?
To understand the US-Libertarianism (European libertarianism being is a sort of an anarcho-socialism), you have to be familiar with the philosophy of Ayn Rand, a self-described philosopher who promoted a "philosophy" called "Objectivism", which is really just a hyper-reductionist form of capitalist economic liberalism coupled with "egoism" - a view that the only thing that can be proven to exist is one's self. Oddly, and very "conveniently" she became hugely popular on campuses at the end of her life in the early 80's - especially among students in the nacient information technology sector - all of it coinciding with the great Reagan reaction.
Ayn Rand is almost unknown outside the US and maybe the UK, though.
Yes, and your assertion can be proven by reading the "conditions" the USA has applied to the few human rights treaties it's signed and ratified.
The rising anger in this country toward people like Lloyd Blankfein, etc. is palpable. Desperate people do desperate things. How many more humans are we willing to watch die for the profit of other humans? Life is a gift, money is a curse.
Why is it that the only immigrants we get now come from very impoverished nations such as Mexico, Guatemala, Laos etc.? The average European would have to be nuts to want to live here. That's why the only first world immigrants tend to be rich pigs wanting to become richer pigs.
And the US is very favoritist toward accepting and even giving aid to those immigrants escaping progressive nations and claiming "political assylum", while sending immigrants back to their death and imprisonment in genuinely tyranical states. In my small borough adjoining Pittsburgh, we have this peculiar community of tough-redneck-looking Croatian immigrants - probably former military ethnic cleansers working for the late Tjudman, probably enjoying Uncle Sam's protection from international justice. Let's see a Serbian victim of that cleansing try the same thing.
Now, we also have a community of Nepalis, one of then even quickly found the money and assistance to open a Nepali grocery. This is odd, becasue the earlier civil war there has been over for a few years. However, the corrpt, caste-based Nepal government may soon fall hopefully peacefully, to the very popular socialist CPN(M). So no doubt the US is welcoming Nepalis escaping those terrible communists with open arms.
But, let's see how long a Colombian union organizer fleeing a death squad can stay in the US before the Migra finds him.
Depends on the country of course. But for our neighbors to the south, to a large extent the reason is NAFTA.
Not long ago the gubmint slapped a huge tax increase on tobacco products, so that the cheapest carton of cigs costs more than $40. It was reported then that the taxes were to be used to supplement the S-CHIP programs.
Landau, meanwhile, reports: "Arizona, like many states suffering from reduced revenues, recently slashed its Children’s Health Insurance Program [CHIP]. About 47,000 kids--all poor, of course--now have no medical coverage."
So where is all that tobacco tax money going? To privatized prisons housing unemployed former pot-smokers?
Are we tired of being lied to yet?
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"To privatized prisons housing unemployed former pot-smokers?"
Don't forget the possibility of pot growers also being imprisoned. I wouldn't mind properly regulating pot but outlawing it is crossing the line. I heard that in CA, advocates for legalizing pot are making the case that growing pot can contribute to the economy.
In Hawaii, the nitwits we have in our City government(a Democratic one by the way) voted to outlaw tents and shopping carts - all aimed at removing homeless - in one of our 'precious' parks near Waikiki. Their only reason - tourists may not like it.
The same City council has spent zero time addressing the basic housing issue.
I spent time with two homeless feeding missions in Waikiki and the problems that these men and women face are too difficult to quantify - physical, mental, emotional are all subsets.
The people in the United States spend more money on pet grooming that the homeless. The United States is a disgrace.
Why do I continue to live here? Because there still is potential to change my country into a country to be proud of.
Just after Obama was elected some union workers--mainly Hispanic but not all--took over a factory in the Chicago area.
Notice how fast their complaint was resolved. Even Obama came out on their side.
He's president now. Why not give him a chance to use some of his emergency powers?
There is a lot of foreclosed and abandoned housing to be liberated across the fruited plain.
Non-violent, but firm and festive.
Teddy Roosevelt almost did the same when coal mines wouldn't negotiate with workers, so yeah there's a precedent for this
This spirit of this essay agrees entirely with my political proposal for a National Safety Net(NSN) Check it out at wwww.nationalsafetynet.info
Housing is a right? As US and British legal theory has it, private property is the right to deprive another of use.
That also applies to housing.
Get serious, my man.
Where property is in the common ownership of the people silly questions like yours do not occur.
Get some cojones and start asking the tough questions rather prancing around like the Liberal incrementalist, Capitalist lapdog you are.
This well intended article needs at least a full essay in response.
I am a great admirer of Abraham Maslow, and have used his famous Hierarchy of Needs as a model for a multiplicity of matters, most of them social activity of helping others. I presume most persons here know the pyramid shaped model, whose base is having the functioning of biological organs and systems to qualify one as being Alive. I contend that a thin layer inserts itself above this level whose basis is that of SELF-RESPECT.
Although the need for food is biological, when food is given to you, your mind is torn by feelings of gratitude and self loathing, appreciation and resentment of guilt, or even flirtation with crime a la Les Miserables. Here in Michigan folks on Food Assistance must use a BRIGHT ORANGE plastic card that can be detected 30 feet away. The program doesn't cover toilet paper or tissues.
Landau's assertion of "right" is but a happy-face band aid against the deep emotional wound of lacking self respect.
EXAMPLE
Once I financed the Christmas of a young couple with a new baby; both parents were recovering from auto injury but their insurance was suspended 20 December! When they answered the door I yelled, "I was going by, thought I'd tell you news that today my bank made a HUGE mistake in my error; there's a large deposit from somewhere but I have no idea. I thought - what the hell - share the windfall with others!!" and passed an envelope to them with folding money. I deliberately did NOT say Merry Christmas. I said, "I have two more stops to make, see you in the New Year," and away I bolted. I hoped that this charade was enough to annul shame.
Okay, no child should be without shelter. But even small children can judge the relative qualities of shelter, and feel shame when their's is "in the Projects" or Ethni-town, or on the wrong side of the tracks. And this damages them. What I believe is our most basic right is freedom from being STIGMATIZED - being divided into the deserving and undeserving poor, commonly being damned with faint praise.
Trylon
You're welcome. Nothwithstanding my graduate degree I have been homeless. For six months I slept in a sleeping bag, on stacked pallets in a small warehouse heated to 35 degrees while outside for 2 of those months it was in single digits. I read dozens of pocket books by flashlight. Don't ever ask me to give a college Commencement Address.
Yes, an education is a ticket to ride, but some MF of a conductor can still eject you from the train if you challenge authority too often and expose them publicly as fools and knaves. A govt. program trained me to make websites and use PhotoShop ha ha ha ha that was a dumb thing for them to do. I could then expose SOBs to the whole world. My motto is, "The unexamined e-life is not worth e-living".
Lincoln said: "God sure must like poor people, He makes so many of them."
Although I liked the Harry Potter series, I was more interested in pictures of J.K. Rowling. Isn't she pretty, for a Muggle?
As Weber saw (in his case with approval) Calvinism and Capitalism are intimately related and reinforce one another psychologically.
That fact is also behind the particularly virulent form of Capitalism in the US.
In the UK and Europe, with their far broader qualifications to receive welfare, almost all students are probably on the dole for a while (while also not having any tuition to pay).
This bizarre resentment and loathing among USAns about being "coerced" to give even a fraction of a cent of their money to someone "undeserving" and worse, the elevation of this attitude to the level of high moral principle (per the "Libertarians"), is one of the truly revolting thing about USAns.
I find it criminally self righteous, arrogant, hypocritical, and downright stupid to try proving your Christian beliefs by howling about the use of condoms, insisting on the ten commandments being posted everywhere from court houses to schools, and putting words in the mouth of Jesus full of hate and violence.
Let's bring ALL the troops home and even with screams of "socialism" in our ears make not only housing but food, medical care, and --dare I say it--an income of $20,000 a year to every household a guarantee.
We could easily afford it without closing any schools or libraries.
It's called inflation,
What constitutes a house hold , I live solo. So would I be entiteld to the 20,000$ . Or do I need to have a family.
In fact would the government have the right to order me to move back in with my abusive pops till I have some kids.
How about some more transitional housing, this program takes 30% of a persons income for "rent" . The catch is all this "rent" is given back to the person when they leave the program after a year or 2 . Add some more free vocational training and we can eliminate proverty for all who want to work hard.
But the thing is responsibility is here to stay... Hmm at my current job a few of my friends chose to drive to work. We have the same income more or less, but I take the bus, saving 400-600$ a month. May I mention I live further away from work then many of them.
My rents 575$ a month... Now do I have the right to tell my co worker to sell his car when he's short on rent, no. Liberty = Responsibility .
I am always amazed when members of congress especially the Christians, declare that helping the poor people will make them dependent upon government assistance permanently. Therefore we do more harm to them when we provide a safety net. The people I know who were on public assistance were anxious to become independent and find a job with a living wage income and they did during good economic times. But Americans need to have an education, job training, presentable clothing, and transportation. They also need to be free of any stigma that could disqualify them for private sector jobs where discriminatory employers, immorally base disqualifications on race,religion, mental illness,gender, obesity, sexual orientation, ect.. Many of the living wage jobs have left the country. I would remind the Christians that Jesus said: Feed the hungry, clothe the naked, shelter the homeless, and heal the sick. He did not say:do not help the hungry,the naked the homeless and the sick , you will make them dependent upon public assistance or charity.
What is the logic that housing is an individual human right? Why stop at housing. Why not declare that every individual has the right to free food, free education, free sex, the life of luxury, a free car, etc. Since a governmnent official in the EU has proposed that a vacation is a human right, why shouldn't the US follow suit. Therefore, if the vacation is a human right, the government is responsible for paying up to 30% of an individual's annual vacation.
As human beings we are responsible for taking care of children, the injured, elderly and those who cannot care for themselves. The government is not responsible for anything except ensuring we have an OPPORTUNITY to succeed. Whether we succeed or fail is an individual responsibility and not the government's role. I have no problem contributing 25%+ of my income to helping the poor, sick and injured. I have a strong objection to the government taking my money to distribute it based on their judgement.
Even Von Hyack, a darling of the libertarians, understood that a society should provide a basic level of shelter and subsistence to all. in a democratic society, the "government" is the collective will of the poeple, and the minimum level of guaranteed subsistence ans shelter determined democratically.
European nations that follow this principle (providing free education, healthcare, far higher minimum wages, paid long-term family and maternity leave, statutory leisure time etc.) enjoy a standard of living that is better than the US by every measure. And, if you think such a system leads to a nation of lazy slackers, think again. European workers are also generally more competent and inventive and productive than their US counterparts too.
The West European regimes are Capitalism with social welfare.
Capitalism with social welfare is not Socialism.
None of the things you mentioned are given away "free". Rather the Capitalists, seeing that they are threatened with overthrow if they do not share more, share a bit more of the profits their Capitalism extracted from the nation, its resources, and its people.
These regimes will be Socialist when the people at large realize there is no special expertise that any Capitalist owner contributes to society beyond ownership and exploitation.
Also note that the Social Welfare Capitalists remain Neo-Colonialist and Imperialist and indifferent to to the will of the people.
Thus though 63% of Germans want out of NATO's war in Afghanistan Merkel and her blueblood Fascist Defense Minister not only continue but escalate.
At this moment, for another example, tens of thousands are marching the streets of Spain in support of the one Spanish judge who has tried to investigate Franco's massacres and assassinations of Leftist political opponents and who is now on trial to have his judgeship suspended.
If he is suspended Garzon will be the only person ever punished in the matter of Franco's murders, for tryng to uncover that they happened.
This is just scratching the surface.
Greece is another example. The Government in power claims itself as "Socialist" yet tries to maintain the power of Capital and Capitalism over the wishes of the people with its "austerity measures".
These measures are to ensure that the Greek taxpayers remain on the hook for the Greek debt to the INVESTOR Class.
Any government that acts under the principle of borrowing money from the INVESTOR class (Ie indebting the nation) and then repaying the same with interest is in essence supporting the Capitalist model.
Countries that renege on such debt are then ostracized by the international community. This through systems like the WTO , the IMF , The World Bank and the Militaries of the world.
Greeks by the hundreds of thousands protest in the streets and the State is out in full force to force them back to work.
You are right--it easier really simply to do away with most private property, especially real property on the British and American model, which is patterned on the Domesday Book and the right of conquest, lock stock and barrel. You will thus have much less to complain about.
Sam in VA
Sigh. There are so many unpredictable events and things in life, many of which could make you eat those words in ten minutes. The term for your inability to see that is hubris.
Thank you Sam. You are probably the only clear headed thinker here. If the government provides you with every free "necessity", what is the incentive to even work? If you don't work, how could you fund the government's expenditures in providing the free services in the first place? You can't.
Have any of you other posters ever visited a completely socialist country? I have recently been to Cuba. Nearly everything is owned by the state. All homes are provided free by the government. But what do you get? Plumbing that doesn't work, infrastructure that's literally caving in on you, no AC, windows that have no panes, and 2-3 generations living under one cramped roof. Personally I would rather live on the streets.
In Havana, where I stayed, most people spend the day as bums. For many, the only way to survive is to live off the tourists by begging, prostituting, selling cigars. Tourism is in fact Cuba's number one industry. They would be absolutely nothing without it. Cuba has no other industries that can compete with anybody else in the world. Cigars and coffee aren't nearly enough.
What comes to is nobamacare is a liar, pure and simple.
pjd412
Ayn Rand's Objectivism is the philosophy of a Mafia virus.
[Yale University] Brand Blanshard's philosophy of Rationalism is a viral first cousin, and Rand admired Blanshard greatly: "If there is anything in my philosophy that I should hope might last, it is the quite unoriginal but none the less important thesis that the rational life is at once the worthiest of lives and the most valuable."
Although -as a very bright person- one of my dangers is that of "rationalizing" - it does help me see through the bullshit and shell games of other rationalizers, some of whom can convince themselves of the veracity of all the satirical shibboleths contained in George Orwell's book "1984". Chorus.
"I am the very model of a modern major general - - -
You insult the Outfit.
It is true that the Randists, however, including such as Greenspan, advanced through a network of well placed fellow conspirators.
Greenspan, moreover, advanced though totally incompetent and unqualified--with a minor accounting degree and no understanding of economics or finance at all.
In other words, the ideal candidate to be errand boy of the Finance Capitalists, who also found it convenient to have Greenspan made into a Mainstream Media God for bringing the sun up every morning.
Clinton, who was just another Democrat Corporatist Fascist, made many grievous errors--one of the most severe keeping Greenspan around.
Eugene Costa writes:
"It is true that the Randists, however, including such as Greenspan, advanced through a network of well placed fellow conspirators."
This is true. But back then there were a bunch of neo-libertarian academics in the Liberal Arts who were enamoured of the writings of Ayn Rand. There were also the Media people of the time, like William F. Buckley Jr., who made sure people knew he had Yale connections and always acted erudite. Back then, Ayn Rand really was an Academic FAD. (I was there.) Today, the Arts & Science aspect of academia is being replaced by the Business School, complete with huge contributions from millionaires underwriting their favorite curriculum. Today, try asking an English major if he/she/it has heard of Henry Miller or "The Air-Conditioned Nightmare."
When I read your latest post, it suddenly occurred to me that Greenspan actually played the part of Peter Sellers in the 1979 hit movie, "Being There." Nothing he said made sense while everyone took it as Gospel.
Meanwhile, I agree with you on "nobamacare" and Cuba. To give that person a benefit of any doubt, he/she/it has no knowledge of the half-century U.S. embargo. Nor the fact that Cuba offers more reliable medical care for its own people than does the United States, to say nothing of the medical care they impart to other countries in this world---and probably without the help of GE.
Also, gratuitous comments about how "welfare" creates laziness and dependence reveal serious ignorance of how humans in organized societies tend to approach something called "maturity." [I include the Maslow hierarchy here.] We are born in total helplessness. We are born totally dependent on the adults that created us. (Unlike baby turtles on a distant beach.) We go through stages of growth, one of which is usually a teenage rebellion through which we want and need to "prove" ourselves as capable of being independent from the structures that nurtured us. The vast majority of us seek to demonstrate our value to society. Many are defeated. In this milieu, given the enormity of the population at risk, to assign "fault" to the "failed" individual would seem a bit simplistic.
Housing IS a Human Right. But it is also a very complicated social issue. Try getting a job if you lack an address, regardless of your qualifications otherwise, for example. Homeless with an advanced degree? Schizo! Or PTSD! [People with little or no experience of the real world sometimes have difficulty communicating with people with experience.]
How about changing the karmic equation: "It's my fault/not my fault that I'm a poor bastard who can't support my family," VS "It's my fault/not my fault that I'm an incredibly rich SON OF A BITCH who has contributed absolutely NOTHING to the successful evolution of Humanity. ...
Who really is "at fault" here? No easy answer. But why further blame the Down & Out while holding blameless the too-rich?
We need a universal sea change in how "individuals" view ourselves in the context of Mother Earth. We need a Global Wave. For this to happen we need REAL democracy. Otherwise, the result will be disaster. The technology to create a Global Wave exists. Some have tested it locally in recent years.
The anger out there is justified. Even necessary for these times. How it resolves is another question.
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