"The UN's special rapporteur told us that there exists a right to housing, and that New Zealand is violating it.. The whole concept is ludicrous. A right to housing, taken as a positive right, implies an obligation on someone to provide it." #QotD

"The United Nations' special rapporteur told us that there exists a right to housing, and that New Zealand is violating it.
    "She went on to recommend the kinds of things that are utterly useless in increasing housing supply: more rules on landlords, capital gains taxes and the like.
    "The whole concept is ludicrous. A right to housing, taken as a positive right, implies an obligation on someone to provide it. And why would you even start there when government so regularly violates basic property rights through processes that make it effectively impossible to build? How can we go around damning landlords, while being utterly inured to the regularised processes that block new housing from being built? ...
    "If a landlord evicting a tenant is violating human right, according to the United Nations, what should we think about council bureaucrats who forbid building? "

              ~ Eric Crampton on 'Rights to Housing'
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