The (Natural) Right to Housing (part 2): Leviathan

Any conversation about natural rights has to consider a basic text of political science, the Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes. For those that have been out of school for a while, the Leviathan was published in 1651 and is an essay (a long essay) regarding how and why governments are formed.

Here's a quick summary of what I find in Leviathan that is applicable to this question of whether there is a natural right to housing. Hobbes line of logic is:

1. All persons are born equal in nature.

2. Without government, life is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short (this is one of Hobbes's famous quotes). Everyone is at war with everyone.

3. The "laws" of nature are what men agree to as articles of peace due to a fear of death from war. Laws determine and bind persons from action.

4. The "rights" of nature are that each person has the liberty to pursue self-preservation (liberty being the absence of external impediments). Rights are the liberty to do or forbear doing some thing.

5. Some rights are inalienable under any circumstance, such as self-defense against force.

6. The sum of the laws of nature are "do not unto others that which you would not do to yourself." This is an interesting twist on the Golden Rule to "do unto others as you would do have them do unto you." It reflects Hobbes's emphasis on liberty (i.e. the right to act or not act).

So, where does that lead us regarding a right to housing? The following reflects one way to interpret Hobbes with regard to this subject:

1. Self-preservation is a right of nature, fundamental, inalienable, and common to all persons.

2. Among the physical things needed for self-preservation are food and shelter, at least at subsistence levels. Without laws to the contrary, persons would create subsistence shelter on their own (or they would perish in many climates).

3. The ability to shelter ourselves is not possible unless the titling of land into ownership by law incorporates a way to ensure all persons hold title to some land suitable for human habitation (e.g. a common area available to all).

4. Further, zoning ordinances and building codes prohibit the creation of some forms of shelter that would be suitable at a subsistence level, thereby reducing some persons to the absence of shelter.

5. Because the right to self-preservation in alienable, no law that prohibits the provision of subsistence shelter without providing an equivalent alternative is unjust.

6. To do otherwise violates Hobbes's sum of the law of nature.

Hobbes's political philosophy leads me to conclude he would be in favor of a right to housing. However, Hobbes's most well known quotation (i.e. "life is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short") and his belief that persons are naturally at war with one another unless they form a government bound by laws suggest that even our worst prisons or shelters would probably look luxurious to Hobbes. After all, the right to self-preservation is not a right to equality and would more likely reflect bare subsistence at best (i.e. that which people would create in nature if otherwise unobstructed by laws).

Next stop, John Locke's Two Treatises of Government...