With housing a vital containment against the spread of COVID-19, housing is finally receiving national public health recognition both needed and deserved. Shelter, along with food and clean water, have, for more than a century, been identified as the fundamental sources of public health and for any nation’s population. These three human requirements are the foundation of health care. They are far more needed than an overpriced high-tech profit-oriented health care system.
Viewing housing as an integral part of a nation’s health-care system, where do ‘small-government’ dominated legislatures stand in relation to the pressing need to achieve housing for the public (meaning all, not just some, of the public)?
So universal are ‘small-government’ behaviours in response to pressing housing needs that examples can be chosen from many nations that have immediate resonance in other similarly-governed states.
For a classic example of ‘small-government’ penny-pinching and its associated buck-passing to profit-obsessed free enterprise, an Irish example captures a certain ‘read it and weep’ quality to a saga of government stubbornly spending less in the service of actually spending more of the taxpayer’s money.
Read more about the declining fortunes of much-needed social housing in anphoblacht: Home Is Where The Struggle Is
A sensible conclusion to reach after reading this article is that ‘small-government’ political parties badly need to be thrown out of power so that more public-oriented public health policies might be implemented more effectively, and ultimately, quite possibly more inexpensively. That includes housing for all, which includes social housing, if free enterprise cannot provide an effective private alternative.
Throw out parties that kick down at the public while kissing up to free-enterprise. It seems the Irish at least are well on their way to doing just that1.
