By: Jože Biščak
Above the video, which they recorded with I do not know which of their members or supporters, the Levica party wrote: “Housing is not an opinion. It is a right!”
It was neither the first time nor will it be the last, but since they are currently in government and apparently have plenty of money, which they steal from people through taxes, they are announcing the largest “push for public housing construction” since independence. This is harmful, because the price of real estate will only rise further, not fall. These are the basics of economics: when the state intervenes in the market with its measures, even if entirely well-intentioned, nothing good comes out of it.
But let’s put aside state-led housing construction and its potentially catastrophic consequences for the market and people’s wallets and look only at the premise. The Levica party claims that housing is a right. This is already fundamentally mistaken. A roof over one’s head is a need. From the beginning of humanity, people have had basic needs: not to be hungry, not to be thirsty, to have shelter. These are needs. There is no such thing as a right to food, a right to water, a right to a home. At least not historically. These so-called rights crept into our subconscious and exploded in the postmodern era. The damage to the understanding of fundamental human rights and freedoms was done soon after the Second World War, when in 1948 the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted. It defined the “right” to a standard of living adequate for health and well-being, including housing. Twenty years later, the United Nations adopted the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, which recognised a similar right of everyone to an adequate standard of living, including food, clothing, and housing. This eventually led to some states (or even cities) adopting resolutions declaring the right to housing as a fundamental human right (for example, the city of San Diego). But what does this mean?
Although I have written about this many times, it is apparently necessary to repeat it, because the understanding of rights as presented by the Levica party has infected even people with common sense, and the confusion between rights and “rights” has become mainstream. Fundamental human rights and freedoms (to life, private property, freedom of speech) are so-called negative rights (a person is born with them), while other rights (to housing, decent living, health) are positive rights and must be acquired. The former are protected, unconditionally guaranteed to the individual and apply to all. The latter always require something that comes at the expense of someone else, when one group of people demands that another group unconditionally fulfil their wishes.
Housing is a need and also a foundation for human well-being, but it is tied only to property rights: the right to ownership and protection from government interference. By contrast, the positive right to housing is a demand that the government provide housing for those who need it. This means the government must secure resources (money) from other people (redistribution). By equating these two different categories of rights (negative and positive), Levica blurs the contradictions between them and their consequences. And so, the “right to housing” becomes a tool of politics and election campaigns used to attract votes. No one defends property rights anymore, the ones that create an environment in which anyone can buy a home. Instead, everyone thinks in terms of systems that favour one group of people at the expense of another.
The right to housing must be understood as a freedom, protected by the constitution, namely the (individual) right to property (fundamental rights and freedoms always apply to the individual, never to the group). But the rise of collectivism (socialism) has thoroughly scrambled and confused the understanding of human rights and freedoms. A home is indeed at the very centre of human life and is important for achieving happiness and personal flourishing, but it is by no means the duty of the state to provide housing (or any other form of) assistance.