Is housing a human right?

In 1999, the US Supreme Court handed down a landmark civil rights ruling that would have profound implications for Americans with disabilities. In Olmstead v. L.C., the Court held that the unnecessary segregation of individuals with disabilities in institutions constitutes discrimination under the 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). The case was brought by two women with intellectual disabilities and mental health conditions, Lois Curtis and Elaine Wilson, who had been confined in a Georgia psychiatric hospital. Curtis and Wilson sought to move to community-based care settings where they could live independently with adequate supports.

In the majority 6-3 opinion authored by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the Supreme Court sided with Curtis and Wilson. The ruling established that the ADA’s aim is to provide disabled persons with full community integration when appropriate supports are available, and that unjustified confinement violates this right to integration. It affirmed that mental illness and disability should not preclude independent living or equal participation. The State of Georgia was thus required to provide services to allow Curtis and Wilson to move into their own homes.

A recent article discusses how expanded access to independent living opportunities is still needed today to fulfill the promise of Olmstead. Over two decades later, finding affordable, accessible housing remains extremely difficult for many Americans with physical and mental disabilities. The high costs of rent and scarcity of accommodating properties often pose barriers to disabled persons transitioning out of restrictive settings. Thus, whilst legally empowered by the Olmstead case to receive supports for independent living, translating rights into realities continues to require sustained advocacy and focus on implementing more inclusive housing, as this article argues.

First question, why was Olmstead necessary in the first place?

Prior to the landmark 1999 ruling, Curtis and Wilson languished in a Georgia state psychiatric hospital for years against their will. Despite assertions that they were ready to move into community-based living arrangements with proper supports, the state refused to authorise their transfer. The women remained confined to the isolated institution, stripped of independence and integrated living opportunities.

Behind the state’s intransigence lay the widespread stigma surrounding mental disability. Their diagnoses of mental illness and intellectual disability meant the legal system did not view Curtis and Wilson as capable of making their own choices about housing and lifestyle. Going further back in history, persons with ‘psychiatric conditions’ were often warehoused in large asylums and hospitals, seen as forming a separate caste unfit for normalisation. Though such institutions declined over the 20th century, the attendant beliefs that perpetuated segregation persisted.

Additionally, the state of Georgia contended community-based care would be an unreasonable financial burden compared to the cheaper psychiatric hospitalisation. They argued meeting individual needs outside an institution would sap public resources. Thus the state preferred confining disabled persons as a cost-saving measure, often justified under the guise of treatment. Combined with stigma, economic considerations created inertia preventing Curtis and Wilson from leaving despite their pleas.

It was only through the courts that these barriers of stigma, paternalism, and convenience could be overcome. The ADA and Olmstead affirmed that the desire to live independently took moral and legal precedence over state budgets or public bias surrounding mental disability. Upholding this vision, however, remains an unfinished struggle over two decades later.

Second question, why are efforts to ethically house people so piecemeal in the US?

In an ideal world, the Olmstead Supreme Court ruling should have established a clear human right to integrated, ethical housing for Americans with disabilities. However, the efforts remain frustratingly piecemeal over 20 years later for several reasons.

Firstly, the Olmstead decision decreed that states must provide community-based living support for disabled citizens, but did not outline strong enforcement mechanisms. There were no hard federal mandates or penalties created if states failed to comply. Much depends on disabled Americans themselves bringing legal challenges against non-compliance, which is arduous and case-by-case. States have also argued community placement accommodations require unreasonable levels of increased spending, allowing them to evade responsibilities.

Secondly, housing policy and investment in the U.S. broadly fails vulnerable populations, not just the disabled. There is no established “right to housing” guaranteeing affordable access for low-income citizens in general. Issues like rising rents, gentrification, income inequality, and limited housing stock constrain options for many disabled individuals transitioning to independent settings. Systemically improving integration requires linking disability rights to broader housing justice causes.

Finally, lasting stigma against ‘psychiatric condition’ and condescending attitudes about ability perpetuate NIMBYism (Not In My Backyard) when group homes or accessible apartments arise in neighborhoods. Community pushback stems ignorance and prejudice against empowering those with disabilities. Such stigma manifests in public policy neglect. Realising the promise of Olmstead means embracing disability as a civil rights issue bound up in the broader struggle for equitable housing as a human right. The ruling was just an early milestone in this still unfolding journey. With adequate advocacy and education, more progress can hopefully be made.

What does a “human right to housing” look like?

A human right to housing encompasses the idea that all human beings, regardless of social or economic status, deserve safe, affordable, and decent shelter. Codifying such a right legally obligates governments to work proactively toward the goal of universal access through policy and resource allocation. Though no country on earth has perfectly implemented such a broad right, some have come closer by enacting aspects of it.

For example, France legally guarantees all citizens have an enforceable right to housing, spelled out in the 1990 Besson law. This obligates municipalities to ensure adequate low-income housing through new construction, rent subsidies, and emergency shelters as needed. Scotland recently passed its own broad right to housing law requiring local councils to find accommodation for homeless applicants.

Other countries like South Africa, Spain, and Canada recognise housing rights for vulnerable groups like the disabled and low-income families. This more limited approach still creates mandates for public housing development and rental assistance earmarked for target populations.

A fully comprehensive human right to housing might include government promises like sufficient public housing units to meet needs; capped rent burdens for individuals below a certain income level; enhanced rental assistance programs; accessible housing requirements for those with disabilities; equitable housing development across all neighborhoods; and legal anti-discrimination protections in housing.

The United States federal government does not recognise an overarching right to housing or right to community integration for those with disabilities. Without national standards, each state implements piecemeal policies and funding levels. Grassroots disability advocacy organisations continue pushing the unfulfilled vision of Olmstead while also linking up with broader housing justice movements needed to pressure real reform.

The argument against housing as a “human right”

Some here oppose codifying housing as a positive right in law based on a narrow interpretation of the US Constitution’s purpose. The Bill of Rights and 14th Amendment specify what the government cannot do - violate freedoms of religion, speech, deny due process, etc. However, the Constitution largely does not mandate what the state must provide its citizens.

This stems partly from the views of Founders like Thomas Jefferson who favoured ‘limited government.’ Later Presidents like FDR tried passing a “Second Bill of Rights” to include rights to education, health care, housing, and jobs. But this effort failed as critics saw it as imposing excessive bureaucracy and taxes (how much do we spend on war and weapons these days?).

Similarly, Barack Obama noted the Constitution defines what government can’t do to people, but doesn't require action to help people. In this view, explicitly guaranteeing social and economic rights could balloon federal overreach and public spending. Housing advocates counter that other democracies have constitutional commitments to social services without calamity. Still, the opposition here believes codifying such positive obligations falls outside the intent of the US founding documents.

From this perspective, establishing a national right to housing would be an unprecedented expansion of federal duty. It risks ballooning deficits, requiring tax hikes, empowering regulators, and interfering in local policy decisions around zoning and rental markets. Though a moral good, putting housing on par with free speech as human right could undermine limited Constitutional government, or so the counterargument goes. Of course, supporters contend housing all citizens is precisely the duty of a just government. The debate persists without resolution and explains the enduring patchwork approach seen today.

What’s really at issue?

Since the founding of this colonial settlement, the political leadership and owning classes of America have benefitted substantially from easy access to cheap labour from disadvantaged groups. The enslavement of African peoples most overtly fueled early American agrarian capitalism for decades. Later, abusive industrial working conditions and low pay for successive waves immigrants and settlers supplied needed labour to drive profits.

Access to this permanent underclass was enabled in part by precarious systems of housing and limited social support. Having vulnerable populations continually exposed to uncertainties of unemployment, homelessness, discrimination, health crises, and so on ensures dependence on any subsistence work available. Providing instead secure public housing, robust worker protections, healthcare access, and the like reduces peoples’ willingness to toil under unappealing, backbreaking, or dangerous work just to survive.

In that sense, America’s enduring failure to establish fundamental positive rights to decent livelihoods helps reproduce an anxious underclass primed for economic exploitation. Though morally dubious, the incentives quite clearly favour those reaping gains. Consider post-Civil War sharecropping which kept nominally freed blacks tied through debt and only-available line of work - cotton for extractive white landowners. Compare to FDR affirming the need for a Second Bill of Rights in 1944 amid a radicalised national labour movement suddenly less willing to endure workplace abuses post Depression-era suffering.

In essence, America’s celebrated “rugged-individualist” belief system provides ideological cover for prolonging a system of induced desperation and insecurity from which owning groups readily benefit. Only powerful social movements forcing the state’s hand have led to periodic reforms and widened opportunity from below, as seen in the Progressives era or Civil Rights movement. Housing insecurity remains a key method maintaining dependence and anxiety across generations - contrary to constitutionally enshrining positive rights or housing security for all.