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The Socratic Hearth

Questions Defence · housing

Is housing a need, or a strategy for meeting needs of shelter, safety, and belonging?

Dignity Needs keeps needs and the ways of meeting them as separate kinds. Whether housing is a need of its own, or one way to meet shelter, safety and belonging, is recorded there as an open disagreement.

A Dignity Needs fault line

Write your position on this Read the two starter cards

Two starter cards

Written for the hearth so this question has a whole card on each side to argue with. No visitor wrote them, so the two parts only a person can fill are empty: what happened to you, and who on the other side called the case against fair.

A need

Where this card stands
A need. People can’t meet the others without a stable place to live, so housing itself should be what everyone can expect.
How sure, before and after the case against
65%55%
The strongest case against it
Calling housing the need fixes the answer to one form, a dwelling, and rules out other ways to meet shelter and belonging, such as shared or cooperative living.
What would change this card’s mind
If people in shared or cooperative living said their needs were as well met as people in homes of their own.
What happened to you
Empty on a starter card.
Called fair by someone on the other side
Nobody yet. Only a person can fill this.

Argue with this card

A strategy

Where this card stands
A strategy. The needs are shelter, safety and belonging. A house is one way to meet them, and naming the needs leaves room for others.
How sure, before and after the case against
55%50%
The strongest case against it
Naming only the underlying needs lets governments offer shelters and hostels as meeting the expectation, when what people need is a home of their own.
What would change this card’s mind
If places that wrote their promises in terms of shelter provided worse housing than places that named housing.
What happened to you
Empty on a starter card.
Called fair by someone on the other side
Nobody yet. Only a person can fill this.

Argue with this card

“Argue with this card” opens the card on the front page with this card’s position as the case against you. You write where you stand and what would change your mind.

More in Defence

Next on the shelf

Should an average household income be enough to buy an average-priced home?

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