The right to housing in an ownership society

ABSTRACT

The last decade has seen the rise of a new alliance among U.S. housing advocates, human rights advocates, and right to the city advocates that stands unified in opposition to rising rents, gentrification, evictions, and the criminalization of homelessness. In contrast to earlier housing movements that often diverged over the question of means, this new “housing justice” alliance has the potential to unify housing advocates under the big tent of a cosmopolitan human right to housing and a collective right to the city. This paper provides a critique of the normative conception of justice implied by the contemporary American housing justice movement. I argue that while rights offer a compelling moral foundation for housing policy reform, the most defensible conception of the right to housing is one grounded in the individual right of social citizenship. I argue that the right to housing should be understood as a right that is constitutive of, rather than in opposition to, the right to own property. When the collective right to the city conflicts with or fails to support the right to housing, I argue that housing advocates should prioritize the right to housing over the right to the city.

KEYWORDS:

• Housing justice
• right to housing
• right to the city
• human rights

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Theorists have traditionally understood rights in one of two ways. Interest-based theorists understand rights as morally weighty interests that obligate some other party to take action to satisfy that interest, where interests are defined in terms of the aims of each right holder, taken one at a time (Raz, 1986). Choice-based theorists understand rights not in terms of the interests that they serve, but in terms of the zone of decision-making autonomy within which the right holder has discretion to act (Hart, 1955). Both these conceptions have limitations. The interest-based theorist must respond to the challenge that the value of the interests justifying rights is agent-relative and incommensurable with the value of the same interest for other agents. The choice-based theorist must provide an account of rights is that does not require the rightholder to possess the power to waive others’ duty to satisfy rights (Mack, 2000). Mack (2000) offers a third conception of rights that meets both of these challenges.

2. The term “predistribution” comes from Hacker (2011).

3. In an earlier paper, Nussbaum identifies aspects of the human body which are “part of any life that we will count as a human life” and which need protection (Nussbaum, 1992, p. 216). Included on this list is the “need for shelter,” which she describes as follows:

A recurrent theme in myths of humanness is the nakedness of the human being, its relative susceptibility to heat, cold, and the ravages of the elements. Stories that explore the difference between our needs and those of furry or scaly or otherwise protected creatures remind us how far our life is constituted by the need to find refuge from the cold, the withering heat of the sun, from rain, wind, snow, and frost (1992, p. 217).

Nussbaum argues that if one has a right to shelter, it is better to understand this right in terms of capabilities, rather than in terms of resources or utility, because

… giving resources to people does not always bring differently situated people up to the same level of capability to function. The utility-based analysis also encounters a problem: traditionally deprived people may be satisfied with a very low living standard, believing that this is all they have any hope of getting. A capabilities analysis, by contrast, looks at how people are actually enabled to live. Analyzing economic and material rights in terms of capabilities thus enables us to set forth clearly a rationale we have for spending unequal amounts of money on the disadvantaged, or creating special programs to assist their transition to full capability (2000, p. 99).

4. I thank an anonymous reviewer for providing this example.

5. Although Essert (2016) argues that the right to property should include the right to alienate property, his justification would be consistent with limitations on the right to earn income from property, provided those limitations were designed to enhance the opportunity for others to acquire control rights.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Casey Dawkins

Casey Dawkins is a Professor of Urban Studies and Planning, Director of the Urban Studies and Planning and Urban and Regional Planning and Design Programs, and Affiliate of the National Center for Smart Growth at the University of Maryland. Prior to joining the University of Maryland, Dr. Dawkins was an Associate Professor of Urban Affairs and Planning, Director of the Metropolitan Institute, Director of the Center for Housing Research, and Editor of the journal Housing Policy Debate at Virginia Tech. His current research focuses on U.S. housing policy evaluation; housing justice; metropolitan housing market dynamics; the causes, consequences, and measurement of residential segregation by race and income; affordable housing and transit-oriented development; and the link between land use regulations and housing affordability. He has written two books and over 50 refereed journal articles and book chapters on these topics. Dr. Dawkins currently serves on the editorial advisory boards of the Journal of the American Planning Association and Housing Policy Debate. Dr. Dawkins’ research has been supported by funding from a variety of organizations, including the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, U.S. General Services Administration, Fannie Mae Foundation, Brookings Institution, National Association of Realtors, Center for Housing Policy, Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, and several other governmental, private, and nonprofit organizations within Virginia, Maryland, and the District of Columbia.