When your country needs housing, it is both conventional as well as common to build houses for people who need them. A substantial number of the world’s countries are directly familiar with this problem and have measured up to it.
An obvious set of examples is provided by the events of World War II. Americans needed more houses built as it ramped up war production in areas without sufficient housing.
Canada built affordable housing for returning veterans and their families.
As for Europe, where civilian populations were caught up in the destruction, both sides built huge numbers of homes postwar to replace the ones destroyed during the conflict.
Where, today, is the evidence of honourable need, as well as evidence of the proven capability to build significant numbers of homes? Financialization of housing can carry the same impact as being bombed out in wartime — homelessness.
Without serious attempts to provide needed housing, it becomes more and more socially acceptable to ‘lose patience’ with people who are homeless, as if they are selfish, recalcitrant children whose family ideals are to camp out and wallow in the supposed joys of drug culture.
With these beliefs about homelessness, it’s hardly surprising to read that encampment sweeps are seizing people’s identities and their possessions, chasing them and their families into the woods, out of sight, and momentarily at least out of mind.
But when they come creeping back towards a community to avoid starvation, what then? Does the following article reflect the only possible solution, absent meaningful attempts to recognize a human right to adequate housing?
Read more about the possible shape of one final solution, in USA TODAY: A homeless man living on national forest land was shot by federal police. He’s now suing
