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Re:San Francisco median one bedroom apartment rent hits a ne... by leereeves on Sunday March 03, 2019 @03:12AM (#19293361)
Many rights in the US are only guaranteed in the sense that they "shall not be infringed" or "Congress shall make no law". The Constitution guarantees freedom of religion and the right to bear arms, but the government won't build you a church or buy you a rifle.

Housing could be a right in that sense: the government shall make no law preventing the construction of housing. Of course, like all other rights, it would be balanced against reasonable government interests like ensuring that the housing is safe.

Re:San Francisco median one bedroom apartment rent hits a ne... by whatshisface on Sunday March 03, 2019 @01:27PM (#19295922)
>the government shall make no law preventing the construction of housing

The most pragmatic objection to this would be that everything you do prevents the construction of housing - if you build a city hall, you are preventing an apartment block from being built on the same land. Taxes prevent the construction of housing because the reduce the funds available to home builders and buyers. Property rights prevent the construction of housing because they would prevent me from setting up a tent in your front lawn. Making housing a right is a wellspring of endless absurdities, unless you are willing to treat it as a "maybe" goal. Maybe-goals and human rights are disjoint sets.

>Of course, like all other rights, it would be balanced against reasonable government interests...

So, let's look at a real human rights example, being assassinated by your government because you are protesting something. The dictator might claim that they were balancing your life against reasonable government interests - the reasonable response would be, "no interest is so reasonable that what you did would be justified." That's the thesis of human rights, if anything is justifiable then you don't believe in human rights. It's not that complicated.

So, if you think that housing as a basic human right can be suspended for reasonable reasons, you either don't really think it's a human right, don't believe in human rights at all, or are proposing a distorted crazyland.