So, Who Do We Shoot?
Is the right to defend one's home only available to those who first have a home?
Last week, I sat down as a guest of Rebecca Dehl to record an upcoming episode of The Conversation Mill podcast: https://www.conversationmill.com
It felt like time well spent because Rebecca asked "ponderful" questions that this philosophy major could chew on. We discussed the taxonomy of distributive justice, which was fun, but she also asked why I thought housing was a human right and my answer might be unexpected and weird - but you must expect as much from me by now.
"Because it just is" would be my answer off mike - but I had to persuade her and her audience of this.
I could have noted the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution says that we, the People, enjoy "the right...to be secure in [our] persons, houses, papers, and effects." But I offered a different way that we know that housing's a human right, at least in South Carolina, and that's because of the "Castle Doctrine" which basically gives people the right to use lethal force against anyone who breeches the threshold of your home without invitation or license.
The safety, security and dignity that’s accorded to us by our homes is so sacred that we can take someone else's life for infringing on it.
That sounds like a right to me. This right exists beyond the four corners of a dusty piece of paper. It is popularly recognized and, for many, it "feels" appropriate to use lethal force to people who intrude our interest in being safe in our homes.
Of course, for those who are homeless, they don't have a castle to defend.
So, are we saying that the right to be safe and secure in your home is a contingent right for those who are privileged enough to own or rent homes? Or does the right to defend a home flow from an underlying, foundational right to be housed?
If you can imagine what a parent might do to a stranger who violated the safe space of a home with a child inside, why is it so difficult to imagine what parents of children might feel justified in doing if they could only figure out who was culpable of denying their child a safe home at night?
Put another way, if you can kill me for standing in the way of your enjoyment of the safety and sanctity of the home you live in, would you not be at least equally violated by the people who obstruct you from having a home to go to each night that would afford you that safety and sanctity and sense of basic human dignity?
I don't know how many home invasions occur here in Greenville, SC over the course of a year, but I do know there were about 2,000 children in Greenville County schools who self-reported being homeless during the latest school year for which that data was collected.
If I was a politician or someone else who's not doing anything to help get those families in housing, I'd be mindful of how many enraged parents are out there, every night of the year, in a state where the laws and culture applaud the use of violence against anyone who obstructs a citizen from the sanctity of a home.
We're in the midst of an out-of-control housing crisis that reaches across America right now and politicians and bankers and the hedge funds buying up residential real estate are all benefiting from a certain amount of confusion that comes from the remote ways they're intruding on and disrupting and denying the housing security of hundreds of thousands of families.
Politicians are getting away with not securing affordable housing for all only because their culpability is obscured and not as concretely observable as a home intruder - much like that scene in the film of The Grapes of Wrath, as the Joads' neighbor, Muley, and his family, are being evicted from their farm and they cannot figure out where the buck stops:
"Whose fault is it?" Muley asks the process server from the bank.
"You know who owns the land: The Shawnee Land and Cattle Company."
"And who's the Shawnee Land and Cattle Company?"
"It ain't nobody. It's a company."
"They got a President, ain't they? They got someone who knows what a shotgun's for, ain't they?"
"It ain't his fault because the bank tells him what to do."
"Alright, where's the bank?"
"Tulsa, but what's the use of picking on him? He ain't nothing but the manager and he's half crazy hisself trying to keep up with orders from the East."
"Well, then who do we shoot?"
Time - as it does - tends to bring clarity to such questions.
Politicians and other powerful people can tell themselves all the lies they want to spread on the question of whether housing is a fundamental human right. We can philosophize over that question on social media. Courts can make declarations about it.
None of those answers will matter once enough people who are insecure about housing get some clarity on the question of who’s to blame. That’s because living without safe, secure and dignified housing means living in a constant state of violence with no easily identifiable attacker.
Once they know who to shoot, the question of whether housing is a fundamental human right will be answered conclusively, not by policy wonks, amateur pundits, or courts of law, but by the ends of their shotgun barrels.
None of this, to be absolutely clear, is to imply that violence is a solution. After all, the only person we’ll provide housing for, if it does come to violence, is the person driven to it. The violence is avoidable for those who recognize that housing is a fundamental human right before the violence articulates that truth.
Just work to ensure all people are housed - and work hard to ensure their safety, security and dignity until they are housed - so the debate about housing as a fundamental right remains the province of people who amuse themselves with thought experiments.