I want to start the essay with my opinion on the topic: I do agree with the right of an

adequate standard of living, but I don’t agree with the report and the apparent solution that
was provided .
In the first part of the report was presented a brief description of the
real-estate/housing market, in which the emphasis was on the dehumanization of the term
“house” and the unfortunate events that took place after the financial crisis.
Firstly, the financial markets serve people who represent and constitute financial
markets as we know them. We should attribute some of the responsibility to the individuals
that suffered during the financial crisis, because an important point in the article was made
and the guilt was partially misplaced: “In the U.S., in the 5 years following the financial
crisis, over 13 million foreclosures resulted in more than 9 million households being evicted.
In Spain, more than half a million foreclosures resulted in over 300,000 evictions. Evictions
of this scale surely should give rise to international outrage about violations of the right to
housing. Instead, because they were caused by the failure of relatively affluent states to
regulate financial markets and prevent predatory lending, they largely escaped human rights
accountability.” Before the 2008 financial crisis the practice of N.I.N.J.A (no income, no job
and no assets) loans was very common and it wasn’t normal for financial institutions to
approve such loans, but also to apply for a loan in these conditions wasn’t a good decision
and many people applied for the credit even when they knew that it would be a very hard
responsibility to be taken care of.
Secondly, I do agree with the regulation that has the intention of creating a “healthy”
environment for financial markets like ensuring the safety during a financial crisis. However,
I don’t agree with the regulation proposed in the report especially with the following
paragraph: “States should review all domestic laws and policies related to foreclosure,
indebtedness as well as urban planning and housing development, to ensure that no eviction
is permitted when there are reasonable alternatives, and that housing is built for people who
need it to live in, not for purposes of speculation and the accumulation of wealth .”. This
regulation would mean less houses built which by extension means less jobs created, less raw
materials bought which would lead to less productivity and would affect the global economy.
We could argue that less houses built means smaller prices for real-estate, but the law of
supply and demand dictates that in the short-term there would not be any change. In the long
term the prices will fall for a period, but I do believe that after a while the prices will rise, and
houses will become less and less available for everyone which would lead to the same
position from which we started from. Furthermore, the action stated in the quoted paragraph
would mean taking properties from people that have more of them and restrict the right to
property. From an ethical standpoint, in this discussion you cannot apply the “eye for an eye”
thinking, you cannot choose between rights or to restrict a right so you can apply another one.
Before tackling the next part of the report, I want to highlight that inequality is a
natural and normal occurrence, many laws have been discovered from natural phenomena
that happened in nature, for example: the Pareto Principle (or 80/20 rule) which would
explain that inequality is something normal and unfortunate in some instances, but we should
not let ourselves to be emotional when discussing about these topics, because empathy can
easily dominate over rationality.
In the second part of the article the author gives a lot of responsibility to the
governments to impose legislation and to find strategies to ensure housing for everyone
without acknowledging the challenges that this project would imply. First of all, the
governments don’t have their own money, instead they collect money from the taxpayers, this
means that the taxpayers have the obligation to ensure the safety of other people, while their
safety would decrease, because this measure would be possible if the taxes would be raised ,
scenario in which everyone is affected, including low-income earners, and the other one in
which less funding will go to schools , hospitals and public institution that ensure the safety
of their citizens. These challenges are not easy to overcome, because the government should
take these measures after ensuring that the major institutions are well organized.
Unfortunately, this in not happening in most of the countries and it all comes to a
prioritization of goals, but keeping in mind that contributing members of society should be
the priority. The rise of taxes would lead to a higher saving rate and a smaller consumer
spending rate which would lead to less productivity, less profits and less incentives for
production which would lead to job cuts and this also could lead to a destabilized economy.
The lack of funding of public institutions would lead to poor standards that would inherently
affect the well-being, the education and the future of each citizen in a country. I emphasized
these scenarios because I would like to highlight the fact there is no viable solution that
would come from the policymakers and governments.
In conclusion, even if there is not a simple apparent solution to this problem, I don’t
think that we should stop looking for it, and I hope that with future innovations in the
financial sector this issue would become a thing of the past, because I do believe that
everyone deserves to live in adequate housing condition, and the arguments that I made
should be seen as a critique of the report that was presented before.