Is Housing a Human Right?

My oldest son is an economics major and a graduate of the University of Connecticut. We as a family analyzed what Kamala was saying about housing and think she has been ideas compared to Trump. Kamala Shared Ideas To Lower Housing Costs While Donald Avoided the Issue.

Housing policy issues were a weak point for both candidates but it was good to see that Kamala raised this as an important issue. Harris has proposed tax credits for builders that would incentivize the construction of starter homes sold to first-time buyers. She’s also called for streamlining regulations and cutting red tape to make it easier to build homes, although details of those plans are still unclear.

Streamlining regulations would likely require legislation on the state level that mandates looking at the entire value stream of housing construction and identifying the pain points where the government touches it. Sad, to say that I have not found any affordable housing advocates anywhere on the Internet pushing their government to perform value stream analysis.

Most of what Kamala proposes is more about virtue signaling than anything that will create more affordable housing but she deserves credit for one idea that will make a difference and that is giving away unused federal land to homebuilders which should result in a lowering of costs for all parties and is something the McGovern's can support.

The idea that housing is a human right is supported by various international frameworks and organizations. For example, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 1948, states in Article 25 that everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for health and well-being, which includes housing.

In addition, the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, which came into force in 1976, explicitly recognizes the right to adequate housing as part of the right to an adequate standard of living.

On a practical level, however, the extent to which this right is realized can vary significantly depending on the country and its resources. Many countries have taken steps to address housing as a human right through legislation and policies, but challenges such as affordability, availability, and quality persist.

So, while the principle of housing as a human right is broadly supported on an international level, the effectiveness of its implementation can differ widely.