The consequentialist philosophy of justice (which is the base of the Finnish reasoning) goes a bit like this:

* People should have a right to housing.

* Yet we see many people how apparently can't obtain housing.

* Assuming they don't just all prefer to live on the streets, some forces are hindering them to get housing.

* It is therefore the responsibiliy of society to remove this discrimination, so that people don't just have the right on paper, but also factually.

So this isn't about entitlement in the negative sense.

The constitutionalist view more common in the US:

* People should have a right to housing (I know, not per the consitution, but this is the right this article is about)

* If nobody is discriminated by law, based on race, gender or something else, from practicing this right (e.g. buying property, or signing a contract for renting a flat), then all is fine.

So the core difference is that the consequentialist view looks at empirical evidence to decide whether there is discrimination or not. The institutional view just looks at the law etc. ( = the institutions).

As mentioned, the key here is that "right to..." classically means (in both Europe and US) that one cannot prevented or banned.

This is more fundamental because it indeed used to be that whole parts of society were banned from doing things or owning things.

We now take this fundamental right for granted, which might explain the shift to interpreting "right" as "being entitled to".

There is another aspect in your comment, which to conflate "not being to obtain" with "discrimination". I think this is going a step too far.

My concern in the original comment is that 'being entitled to' can end up eroding the more fundamental right.

You can pick any time period to fit your ideological beliefs. The point is that modern day Europe has developed in an entirely different direction from the US, in large part because Europeans have not had access to an abundance of cheap resources and land. Opportunities and a sensible standard of living has thus depended on government guaranteeing them.

It makes no sense to talk about government being in the way of pursuit of happiness when most people are dirty poor renting some land all owned by a small elite, and there being no free land elsewhere.

That is why in Europe the purpose of governments is to a larger degree to guarantee rights of people. You can see that also in the different way free speech is understood in many European countries compared to the US.

In the US free speech is about government getting out of the way, but other entities obstructing your free speech is far more accepted in the US. While in Europe government to a larger degree seeks to protect your right to free speech in a wider variety of settings. That is why e.g. US company rules often restrict speech, while the same would usually be illegal in many European countries. As your speech is protected by government even inside companies.

People can have their preference on what they prefer. But I think the European model makes more sense for European history and society. It may make more sense in modern day America as well, since there the freedom to just find some land in the wilderness and do whatever is basically gone today. The US is in many ways recreating the old rich elite of Europe of old. The US is in many ways developing into an oligarchy and starts to mimic how Europe was in the early 1800s.

> You can pick any time period to fit your ideological beliefs.

Can you remind me what are my ideological beliefs?

Picking an overly political username and being aggressive isn't very conducive to discussion.