🏡💚 Fight fight fight! Housing is a human right!
December 8th, 2023
If you’re like the majority of Californians, you believe housing should be a human right.
You may have heard that there is a current effort to enshrine that right into the law. ACA 10, authored by Assemblymember Matt Haney, would amend the California Constitution to recognize that every Californian has the fundamental human right to adequate housing.
The text is actually quite simple and short, and I think worth sharing in full here:
“The state hereby recognizes the fundamental human right to adequate housing for everyone in California. It is the shared obligation of state and local jurisdictions to respect, protect, and fulfill this right, on a non-discriminatory and equitable basis, with a view to progressively achieve the full realization of the right, by all appropriate means, including the adoption and amendment of legislative measures, to the maximum of available resources.”
This proposed amendment has an extensive list of co-sponsors, including ACCE, Housing Now, PowerCA, and Western Center on Law and Poverty.
Astute observers may also remember that in 2020 Governor Newsom vetoed a bill that would have guaranteed a right to housing. His reason was the multi-billion dollar price tag (sound familiar?) it would cost to actually provide secure housing to everyone. That same year, a right to housing was also proposed with another Constitutional amendment authored by then Assemblymember Rob Bonta (also called ACA 10).
While many agree in the abstract that housing is a human right, what would a right to housing actually do? The answer to that question is not so clear. Back in May, Michael Tubbs (former Stockton mayor and founder of End Poverty in California) wrote in CalMatters that this would “provide the state with a game-changing legal tool – and an ongoing obligation no matter who is in office – to ensure that every person has access to a permanent, stable home.” This could come in the form of new regulations, state action to prevent NIMBYism (“not in my back yard”), and budget allocations to achieve the scale of funding needed to ensure everyone has secure housing.
A recent article in the LA Times provides a more concrete picture by looking at Scotland, where a right to housing already exists. Passed in 2003, and phased in by 2012, the law stipulates that anyone experiencing homelessness must be entitled to settled accommodation in a local authority or housing association tenancy or a private rental. People who meet the broad definition of homelessness get immediate access to short-term shelter and then put on a list for permanent housing, which is usually heavily discounted.
As a result, very few people sleep on the streets of Scotland, with estimates of about 70 people combined between the cities of Glasgow and Edinburgh (which have a combined total population of 1.2 million). For comparison, Los Angeles has a total population of about 3x that number, but a homeless population of 600x that amount (with estimates that over 46,000 people in LA are without shelter).
One of the housing solutions that Scotland uses is—you guessed it—social housing. As stated in the LA Times article, “Permanent social housing, as it’s known here, is desirable and often high quality, and most people who qualify for it never leave for the private market.”
These kinds of interventions are all interwoven and interconnected. A legal right to housing won’t mean anything without significant dedicated funding to producing, preserving, and maintaining more affordable housing.
And to be clear—budgets are policy choices that reveal our values. Whereas the United Kingdom collects 33.5% of its gross domestic product (GDP) in taxes and devotes significantly more proportional revenue to government services, the United States collects 26.6% of GDP in taxes, and spends much more money on the military (which, tangentially, comes with a huge environmental cost).
In that sense, Governor Newsom’s 2020 veto message is correct: the right to housing comes with a price tag. We just believe that that’s a price we must pay.
Rally in Sacramento organized by Housing Now in support of ACA 10
WHAT WE’RE READING
Recognize the Right to Housing: Why We Need a Human Right to Housing in California — report from earlier this year by ACCE, ACLU, National Homelessness Law Center, and Western Center on Law and Poverty (which also discusses Finland’s right to housing)
CA migrant farmworker housing closes, forces migration (Sac Bee)
Facing the Fire: California's Sierra Foothills Residents Race to Adapt (KQED)
I’ve sent this out to everyone on the current CA GND listserv. If you don’t want to get these weekly newsletters, feel free to unsubscribe below. If you know someone that would be interested, send me their email :)
We’ll be back with another newsletter next Friday morning. Please send any relevant topics, articles, reports, or intel to me at zach@apen4ej.org!
