The Human Right to Housing - Alcyonenews

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Posted July 17, 2023

The Human Right to Housing

We in SaltSpring, are in the midst of a sad battle to save our island from those whom the government appointed to chaperon us lest we fail to “protect and preserve” in perpetuity the unique features of our island. In effect, we have been paying “protection money” for 50 years and now we face a mutiny by the mercenaries who seek to do unto us that which we have been paying them to protect us against.

No less, they want to pepper the Island with ADUs (Additional Duelling Units), so as to align us with the Trust-free communities. ADUs are “age-long concept”, popular in “all small and medium-sized communities...”, they tell us to soften our resistance to their deception effort, and this speaks ill of them.

The reality is that there is a housing shortage world wide. It has been evident for some time and continues unabated without relief in sight. There are a host of causes for it, most of which are ironclad-protected by PR, which shelters the problem from solution.

On March 27, 2018, the Trudeau government recognized the human “Right to Housing” The proclamation left the impression that the new Right has the sanctity of the other Rights, such as the Right to not be jailed for lawful activities, the “Right” to be loved by those who may not love us if left to their own volition; and the Right to suppress the freedom of speech society-wide lest someone, sometime, somewhere say something that may displease someone.

The politicians designed this new Right like a tetrapod, its four pillars being: “inclusiveness; helping those in the greatest need; accountability; and participation”. So said the Minister of Families, Children and Social Development, Jean-Yves Duclos. They topped the tetrapod with “a National Housing Watchdog” bureaucracy, with the usual retinue of Committees, Consultants and Tribunals, I presume.

Putting our money where their mouth is, the Ottawa politicians endowed the tetrapod contraption with a whopping “$40B” which makes it a money monster. This is 40,000 times a $Million, which in turn translates to the lifelong earnings of 20,000 “average” Canadians. It could buy some 160,000 condominiums ... That was some 5 years ago!

But the proclaimed plan was other than said. Its purpose was, in their words, to facilitate “renters being accepted by rental housing owners”. It appears stupid and it is.

Does it make sense to expect SSI to conquer the local Housing problem? That which everybody, everywhere, tries and fails? Well, Dr. Alexander Fleming injected Penicillin into us all; Wilbur and Orvil Wright took the world on a wing to the wind in their Kitty Hawk; Archimedes made water run upwards, did he not? Then Athens with the population of now SSI, realized Democratia and founded Western Civilization.

Should we, the Islanders of SSI shun the Housing problem? The Trust ponders it on our behalf but their performance causes woe and no awe, sad to say. My diagnosis is that we suffer for not heeding Lewis Carroll’s messages conveyed to us through the Cheshire Cat and Humpty Dumpty. We need know where to go and we need understand “exactly” what we think and say.

Perusing the Trust ADU literature and cartography outpour reveals that the Trust lacks personnel with skills commensurate with this task. Dwelling on these “errors”, pedagogical as it may be, will not take us to where we need go. I will forego that and move on to outline a new course to take, one with a fair chance to put us on the right track.

What I suggest is an ad hoc Ideas Bank to seed and harvest ideas any one of us may come up with for the amelioration of the housing shortage predicament. Then, we can wrestle the Housing problem and succeed. Failing to benefit from those among us, who can discern and analyse the data conducive to constructing the solution to the problem is tantamount to subverting the well-being of the society. The IB is the best we can have to pull out that, for it embodies transition from itself to a better system the moment it arrives. It gets no better than that.

I have written about the IB quite a bit, and I explained the rudiments of it the January 17, 2020 Marketplace. The scope of the IB is to make happen the highly toted, mighty gutted, and copiously faked “Freedom to Publish”, without which Democratia cannot be.

In other words, the IB scope is to instigate the genesis, facilitate the evolution, cause the awareness and expose the response of the “magistrates” to the ideas society produces. All hanging out in the open, as it must be, for the alternative is failure and oppression.