EGMT 1540: Housing Is a Human Right.

In 1948, the United Nations drafted and adopted their “Universal Declaration on Human Rights”--a policy document that established what they considered to be universal human rights to be protected and cultivated in all nations. Article 25 of that declaration delineates what standards of living all humans have a right to, insisting that healthful and secure housing is a universal human right.

This class will use the 1948 “Universal Declaration of Human Rights” as its starting point, using the right to stable, adequate, and safe housing as a lens to examine the ethical dimensions of the housing crisis. To do so, we will begin by querying the category of human rights–who or what counts as human?–before analyzing the various ethical and political cases scholars, activists, and community members have made for deeply affordable housing as well as the ways free market

advocates have pushed back on these arguments. We will also hear from low-income housing residents and activists in Charlottesville and Cape Town, South Africa to consider shared sources and solutions to housing instability. In each class, we will consider whether we have an ethical obligation to ensure suitable housing for all people across the world–and how such an obligation could even be met.