• null@slrpnk.net
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      10 months ago

      I don’t think housing should be considered a human right, unless being homeless is made illegal

      Why not?

        • Zagorath@aussie.zone
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          10 months ago

          Something shouldn’t have to be free to be a human right. That’s an extremely right-wing American point of view, where they only believe in so-called “negative” rights.

          A right to housing wouldn’t mean builders and their suppliers have to work for free. That’s the same kind of nonsense reasoning libertarians and conservatives use to argue against free healthcare.

          A right to housing would impose an obligation on governments to do everything they can to ensure housing is readily available to anyone who wants it. Whether by ensuring that everyone can afford housing (economic policies that lower the cost of housing and/or put more money on people’s pockets) or by directly ensuring the government itself can give people a place to live if they can’t afford it. Ideally a mix of both.

            • DoYouNot@lemmy.world
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              10 months ago

              I mean healthcare is definitely a human right, but there is always more we could be doing. That’s a kind of arbitrary distinction that I don’t think adds anything to the discussion here.

              Basic human needs are basic human rights. I really do think it’s as simple as that.

            • Zagorath@aussie.zone
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              10 months ago

              Umm, no. That’s just not correct. A human right is anything a human should have the right to. End of.

              The practicalities of how we achieve that are a separate concern.

                • Zagorath@aussie.zone
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                  10 months ago

                  you have no rights at all

                  Wrong

                  Not even to speech, or the right not to be killed

                  Wrong

                  “Rights” are invented by the society we live in

                  Correct

                  You have literally none in the natural world

                  Correct

                  As it exists, “Rights” are a religious idea

                  Lol what? Where did you even get that idea?

                • brbposting@sh.itjust.works
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                  10 months ago

                  Govt. does its best to ensure citizens aren’t murdered, yet it still happens.

                  Shouldn’t housing be similarly considered a right like the right to life?

        • Taleya@aussie.zone
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          10 months ago

          “It’s too expensive and too hard” are not good reasons to reject a right

            • Taleya@aussie.zone
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              10 months ago

              What kind of backwards arsed ayn rand bullshit is this.

              You do realise society actually only came into existence in and of itself via a loose collective agreement of behaviours, yes? These behaviours were not determined by whether or not they fit into a too hard basket, but whether or not they ensured the social strucuture remained intact for the good of the collective. Those eventually became codes of laws, and now relatively recently the conceept of human rights.

              No shit housing was never ranked a right or even on the radar until recently, it wasn’t an issue that affected enough of the population that it started to threaten social cohesion. It is now.

              You’re acting like lawless nature should dictate our actions when the sole fuckin’ reason we’re the dominant species is our ability and innate nature that works outside these parameters. It’s laughable

        • BolexForSoup@kbin.social
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          10 months ago

          “Because it’s expensive” never stopped us from things we have been motivated about basically ever. All I’m hearing is a fantastic jobs creation program.

          • pingveno@lemmy.ml
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            10 months ago

            A reasonably stable currency is incredibly useful as an abstraction for value. Do you farm potatoes? Do you need a difficult medical procedure? I guarantee you, the surgeon, support staff, and the hospital are not much interested in being paid in a sufficient amount of potatoes.

    • BolexForSoup@kbin.social
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      10 months ago

      Being dehydrated isn’t illegal yet we consider it a human right. Not sure I follow your logic.

    • Zagorath@aussie.zone
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      10 months ago

      I don’t think housing should be considered a human right, unless being homeless is made illegal.

      Huh? I don’t see how that follows.

      Freedom of speech is widely regarded as a human right. But you still have the right not to express yourself.

      Shelter is literally a human need. It’s like, number 4 on the list after air, water, and food. Maybe before food, even. Being necessary for life should be a sufficient condition to qualify as a human right.

        • GoodbyeBlueMonday@startrek.website
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          10 months ago

          Water is tangible though. Clean, safe drinking water isn’t cheaply and widely available (in the USA, anyway) by accident: it’s a huge endeavor that requires tax money to maintain public infrastructure. See the ongoing crises in places with tainted water to see how challenging it is to maintain.

          Housing is harder than water, but public water and sanitation systems are incredibly expensive, so I wonder what the comparison would be like against more public housing.

            • GoodbyeBlueMonday@startrek.website
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              10 months ago

              Hahaha awesome, do you get the majority of your clean water via collecting rain? Do you think it’s a viable source for folks living in dense metropolitan areas?

                • GoodbyeBlueMonday@startrek.website
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                  10 months ago

                  My apologies, since wells are hardly “free” to build and maintain I had assumed you were talking about collecting it directly via a harvesting system. I’ve used wells the majority of my life.

                  My general point is that wells or direct capture is not viable for dense urban areas, and while you’re saying it’s a choice, the majority of folks in the USA live in urban areas. Big urban centers aren’t going away any time soon, so we should consider how to meet people where they are, when possible. The larger point I wanted to make though is that we (at least in the USA, and all the Latin American nations I’ve lived in) have good public sanitation and water systems precisely because it’s seen as a right. And those systems aren’t cheap, but we do it. As I argue we should do more for re: housing.

                  That’s the crux of the biscuit: I just think more should be done to help people afford these basic necessities. I think we should (as a nation/planet) fundamentally rethink the way we approach housing, for the same reasons water and food are subsidized (and they should be further subsidized IMHO, but that’s another point entirely). I’m not going to claim I know the answers, or that it would be easy or cheap, but I think it’s something we should all try seriously to solve.

    • Kras Mazov@lemmygrad.ml
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      10 months ago

      Just why? Every single human being deserve to have access to housing, water, food, education, etc. We NEED those things.

      Companies and corporations, want their workers healthy, housed, disease free, etc.

      No they don’t. They want to pay as little as possible for you to produce as much as possible, it’s literally the logic of the system. Corporations don’t care about their workers, customers or anyone but their owners and investors.

      If they could slave people they would. And look at that, they actually do.

      Just realized its a .world user, they can’t see my comment lol.