Do you think housing should be a right in America?
Week 10 Day 2 Discussion Question 3
April 16, 2017 | 2 Comments
Class, Culture, Representation
April 16, 2017 | 2 Comments
Do you think housing should be a right in America?
April 1, 2019 at 1:34 pm
Housing should be a right in America to the extent that structural inequalities and discrimination along the lines of race continue to exist. No clear pathway to subsiding those barriers has arisen – and cynically, I doubt they ever will – therefore it is only appropriate to say that housing should indeed be a right.
As evidenced by McMullen’s piece in The Post, the notion that homeownership and the accumulation of wealth are achieved on the basis of merit in the US is fundamentally flawed. We have selectively chosen as a society to address only certain aspects of the racial opportunity gap through flawed solutions which provide instant gratification and easily viewable results like affirmative action, whereas we haven’t taken the effort to ever address the myriad racial disparities that manifest from birth to the grave. To be clear, I am all for a capitalistic system where those who work the hardest and produce the most output deserve the most reward, but we need a capitalism 2.0 framework where the monetary value of an individual’s output is not the sole determinant of their value to our society, and furthermore, consumer protections that exist to serve consumers and prevent them from being taken advantage of. The pushing of subprime loans to black households was a particularly troubling point in the McMullen article: “Black families earning more than $200,000 annually were more likely on average to be given a subprime loan than a white family making $30,000 a year… Faber found that blacks were more than twice as likely to receive a subprime loan than white applicants.”
By not addressing the systematic issues that exist like access to an appropriate loan, let alone financial literacy, black families will forever be at a disadvantage because they will never be able to gain the permanent foothold from which to build wealth that everyone else is basically granted as right – homeownership. A dangerous cycle exists where the wealth of many black families reverts back to zero because they are never able to access the tools to create lasting financial security that everyone else takes for granted.
This discussion in America right now over whether healthcare is a fundamental right is similar to the discussion as to whether housing too should be a right too. In the wealthiest nation in the history of the world, is it too much to ask for the government to keep the country safe by investing in keeping people alive and off the dire conditions of the streets, at least to the tune of spending on the Pentagon to keep threats from abroad under control? It’s hypocritical that many consider no price too high for security when any number of lives are on the line, but at the same time remain hesitant to prevent the spread of homelessness, something far deadlier than terrorism ever has been.
March 31, 2019 at 3:35 pm
It is difficult to say that owning a house should be a right, but I believe that access to a decent affordable housing should be a right to everyone. One in five of all renting families in the country spends half of their income on housing as Matthew explains in Evicted. This is a significantly high cost. If we are to answer the question of whether housing should be a right or not, we should think of who is benefiting from the current situation and what the opportunity cost is. The current situation is benefiting mainly wealthy landlords, who represent a fraction of the population. On the other hand, lowering the cost of housing for poor families will free up cash and allow them to spend their money in education, healthcare, better diet, etc which will, consequently, lead to the benefiting of the greater population. If the government can guarantee tax deductions for the wealthy on their mortgage payments, then the government can surely do better providing greater housing assistance and stopping the exploitation of poor renters by landlords.