You’re not homeless. Maybe you don’t even personally know somebody who is. It’s easy to stroll through life thinking things like this are not affecting you simply because you’re not aware that they are, in fact, affecting you and your entire community.
That’s right. Making housing a human right just might improve your life. It will definitely save the lives of the 2.5 million children subject to homelessness each year. It will most certainly improve the lives of the nearly 600,000 adults who are counted as visibly homeless on any given January night.
But let’s talk about you.
Do you know how much better your life would be if housing were a universal right granted to all? How your mortgage could decrease, and how those healthcare bills could plummet? Imagine a city with significantly less poverty and crime.
This is America without homelessness.
Ending Homelessness Could Make Your Rent or Mortgage Cheaper
It’s hard to think about homelessness when you, yourself, are mere paychecks away from it. This is the sad reality for the overwhelming majority of American workers.
We watch in awe as the rents and mortgages relentlessly tick up, wondering if there could be an end in sight. The solution exists in a rather unexpected place – ending homelessness.
The leading cause of homelessness is a lack of affordable housing. We must create at least 7 million more affordable housing units to end homelessness.
Flooding the market with an adequate housing supply would lower demand. Rents and mortgages wouldn’t even level off. They would actually go down.
Other solutions like rent control and increasing wages hold their fair share of pros and cons. In its current state, where demand greatly eclipses the supply, the housing market incentivizes pricing out lower and middle-income earners.
Ending homelessness does not create such dilemmas. Only good things can come from creating an adequate housing supply and making it available to everyone. One of those is decreasing mortgages and rental rates.
Healthcare Costs Could Drastically Decrease
Because a lack of affordable housing keeps fueling a nationwide homeless crisis, the housing shortage costs us billions of dollars in healthcare. Experts project that if things don’t change soon, our healthcare system could lose a whopping $111 billion.
If you think you’re paying too much for insurance and prescription medications now, imagine what those bills will look like ten years from now when senior homelessness has tripled, and healthcare institutions are hundreds of billions of dollars in the rears.
We could prevent this from happening by making housing a human right. Picture this – a flourishing, affordable healthcare system and a mortgage that fits your budget. We’re just getting warmed up.
Crime Would Decrease
In a recent expose, Brookings explains the relationship between violent crime and location, claiming “numerous studies finding that the renovation of housing, vacant buildings, land, and lots in disinvested communities significantly reduces violent crime rates.”
Studies also show that eviction, foreclosure, and blight increase the potential for violent crime. Poverty and income inequality also drive violent crime.
Even subconsciously, we accept this, which is why there is a public outcry any time a visible sign of homelessness, like a tent city, arises. By criminalizing homelessness and sweeping away the visible evidence without actually solving the problem, we are neither reducing homelessness nor decreasing crime rates. The problem still exists, affecting you and your community even if it’s happening miles away.
Money and Public Resources Would Go Way Up
Making housing a human right would free up all the money currently being spent on homeless criminalization, making it available to you and your community.
According to the Urban Institute, Denver spends $7.3 million a year cycling people through homelessness and imprisonment. Los Angeles spends even more, approximately $65.5 million a year and growing.
Imagine the resources your neighborhood could establish if that money were freed up because housing was recognized as a human right. Homelessness could no longer be used as an excuse to keep human beings in cages for cheap labor.
Homelessness is not about individual decisions. It is the result of larger societal flaws. Likewise, providing housing doesn’t just save the lives of the people enduring homelessness. It can also save you and your whole community.
Talk to Your Legislators About Making Housing a Human Right
They say housing is healthcare, and healthcare is universal, at least in theory. An America where housing is a human right is a nation with lower housing and healthcare costs, lower crime rates, and more money to spend on important community resources.
Talk to your legislators about making this dream a reality by making housing a human right.
