Is A Constitution-Protected Right To Housing Fundamentally A Women’s Issue?

A bear on hind legs in a frock and holding a rifle
This scene was created by affordablehousingaction.org and is licensed under CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication

The world is full of both sane and crackpot human ideals enshrined in national constitutions. Americans, for example have a constitutional right to arm bears. Or have we got it wrong? Is it a right to bear arms? And does the difference really matter when comparing the original constitutional objective with its modern application?

This particular American constitutional right reflects just how far out of whack a meaningful legislative protection for the safety of citizens can get. It was originally inserted in the U.S. Constitution to give citizens a right to carry arms if/when they were organized into militias.

Nowadays, however, it gives citizens the right to own a gun for virtually any reason under the sun, and, under an array of circumstances made possible by enormous numbers of guns and gun-owners in the nation, shoot other people dead (and sometimes themselves).

Given this kind of possible degradation of purpose over the years, what’s the best treatment of a new constitutional right enshrined in a national document? Take Ireland, for example. Some are prepared to consider the lead of other countries that have included the human right to housing in their national constitution.

In Ireland, housing activist Rita Fagan proposes that the right to housing is a women’s issue. Is this too much information? Or is it an important framework that needs to be in Ireland’s constitution?

It’s certainly worthy of some consideration. Listen to Fagan on this subject in an interview in The Irish Times: Rita Fagan – ‘The right to housing has to be inserted into the Irish constitution’