Home ownership in Britain has long been synonymous with living the dream. Phrases like "an Englishman's home is his castle" capture a sentiment that freedom can be brought. Hard working families who save the pennies are rewarded with a slice of suburbia. This British Dream has sustained our social order for decades; there's usually been a majority fully signed up. The minority left have endured slums, then social housing, and now the private rented sector.
The relationship between housing and freedom is a defining one. Of course owning your own home is not the only route to housing freedom. But it is certainly the case that, particularly in the context of a deregulated private rented sector, buying a home buys you much more freedom than renting. Basic shelter isn't really a choice, or luxury, it is the foundation for living. If you don't have somewhere to lay your hat every other aspect of your life will be stifled and devalued.
Fashionable libertarians speak rarely of housing as a fundamental issue of freedom. To defend our liberties from over zealous security services seeking to look tough during the war on terror has taken priority, for understandable reasons. The campaigns fought to protect the individual from attempts to slice off little pieces of our liberty in exchange for little pieces of security is a noble cause. But housing freedom is as well, especially given the increasingly numbers of lives being held back by the shackles of poor homes.
Infringements on freedoms normally hurt the poor first, and most. Perhaps the worst curtailment of housing freedom has been social cleansing. The idea of deprived Londoners being driven from their homes because of poverty goes to the heart of our views about what freedom means. Many local authorities, including my own in Harrow, have pursued policies aimed at moving poor people to cheaper areas. That you can no longer remain living where you have chosen to, grown up and love is an grotesque removal of freedom which has been casually caste aside.
The liberty movement has known sexier, more romantic, higher causes than walls and roofs. But the struggle for good housing, to get it and to keep it, will define millions of lives in the decades ahead. The insecurity caused by a society that is inadequately housed threatens to leave us as nervous, unemployable, unhealthy wrecks. Where there is no stability there can be no fulfillment; potential once lost is lost forever.
The relationship between housing and freedom is a defining one. Of course owning your own home is not the only route to housing freedom. But it is certainly the case that, particularly in the context of a deregulated private rented sector, buying a home buys you much more freedom than renting. Basic shelter isn't really a choice, or luxury, it is the foundation for living. If you don't have somewhere to lay your hat every other aspect of your life will be stifled and devalued.
Fashionable libertarians speak rarely of housing as a fundamental issue of freedom. To defend our liberties from over zealous security services seeking to look tough during the war on terror has taken priority, for understandable reasons. The campaigns fought to protect the individual from attempts to slice off little pieces of our liberty in exchange for little pieces of security is a noble cause. But housing freedom is as well, especially given the increasingly numbers of lives being held back by the shackles of poor homes.
Infringements on freedoms normally hurt the poor first, and most. Perhaps the worst curtailment of housing freedom has been social cleansing. The idea of deprived Londoners being driven from their homes because of poverty goes to the heart of our views about what freedom means. Many local authorities, including my own in Harrow, have pursued policies aimed at moving poor people to cheaper areas. That you can no longer remain living where you have chosen to, grown up and love is an grotesque removal of freedom which has been casually caste aside.
The liberty movement has known sexier, more romantic, higher causes than walls and roofs. But the struggle for good housing, to get it and to keep it, will define millions of lives in the decades ahead. The insecurity caused by a society that is inadequately housed threatens to leave us as nervous, unemployable, unhealthy wrecks. Where there is no stability there can be no fulfillment; potential once lost is lost forever.
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