Can there be any benefit to affordable housing efforts in dusting off old chestnuts? This post takes a look at the spheres of economics and human rights. It also considers their practical potential.
Economics
In the late 1800’s, workers seeking housing in industrial towns and cities found high rents, appalling conditions and low vacancy rates. At the time, left leaning thinkers were inclined to dismiss housing protests as irrelevant. Friedrich Engels’ The Housing Question (1872) firmly directed the activities of protesters away from the distraction of housing conditions and toward the workplace, the true site of the class struggle.
Today, the housing situation doesn’t look that much different. Tenants have few housing options due to high rents and low vacancy rates. Poor housing conditions aren’t entirely a thing of the past either. Nearly one in ten renter households in Canada were living in units in need of repair at the time of the 2016 census: the rate was higher in urban areas and higher still in the far north.
Mary Robertson has recently completed a PhD on the political economy of the housing market. She argues that had Engels been alive today, his views would not be the same as they were in 1872. Robertson employs Engels’ methods to revisit the housing question. She argues that housing today is wound into the economy through the financial markets, and subject to speculation and instability. Robertson concludes that in today’s context, housing is a valid site for activism. See more in We Are Salvage: Re-asking The Housing Question
Human Rights
Thinking about the right to housing has also changed over time. The Magna Carta, in the 13th century, does not speak about it at all. The American Bill of Rights (1789) established property rights, but subsequent court rulings have determined that the constitutional right to property does not extend to housing.
While there has been no change in the US, there is movement elsewhere. The United Nations convened the first conference on human settlements in 1976. The right to housing appears in UN documents beginning in 1991. Starting in the 1990’s, other countries began adding housing rights to their constitutions.1 A Fact Sheet On Adequate Housing Rights, issued in 2017, covers these developments and frames the UN’s role in implementing the right to adequate housing. See Office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights: The Right To Adequate Housing
Making use of updated thinking
Does this have any practical use with daily life? Based on our scan of the media, it would seem that the answer is yes. There are definitely political struggles around housing, bearing out Robertson’s thesis. affordablehousingaction.org has reported stories about rent strikes and activism following the Grenfell Tower fire.2
Advocates in Berlin are working to break up the holdings of the largest landlords in that city. The goal is to control rents and improve building maintenance. Human rights and economics are prominent in the campaign’s story line. To see more about the protest in Berlin and elsewhere, see The Guardian: Berlin’s Rental Revolution: Activists Push For Properties To Be Nationalised and The Nation: Berlin’s Radical Housing Activists Aren’t Afraid of Expropriations
Footnotes
- Belgium, Seychelles, South Africa and Uruguay are some examples.
- See more stories in the Politics: Protests category.
