FXB Center for Health & Human Rights, Harvard University, Boston, MA, USA.
Department of Health Services, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA.
Int J Soc Determinants Health Health Serv. 2025 Jan;55(1):5-15. doi: 10.1177/27551938241261246. Epub 2024 Jun 11.
It's now well appreciated that social determinants of health are the strongest predictors of our health and well-being. A good argument could be made that housing is at the top of the pyramid of these determinants. And, surprisingly, housing is also the social determinant that could rapidly turn on a dime-that is, with sufficient political will, creating access to housing could be radically expanded in short order. (Unfortunately, of course, it's true one can also become suddenly homeless, since few protections exist in policy or capitalist economies to prevent it). That alone sets it apart from social factors such as education and racism-conditions that take a long time to change. In contrast to long-term interventions (education) or culturally stubborn and historically rooted problems (racism), housing is rapidly malleable. In this article, we describe the social condition of homelessness in two settings, comparing and contrasting the concepts, causes, and consequences, along with how people are mobilizing to challenge the conditions that create their housing insecurity. As we review the factors that create housing conditions in each setting, we propose some universal international principles for a new approach to the human right of decent and secure housing.
现在人们已经充分认识到，健康的社会决定因素是影响我们健康和幸福的最强因素。有充分的理由可以说，住房是这些决定因素中处于首要地位的因素。而且，令人惊讶的是，住房也是一个可以迅速改变的社会决定因素——也就是说，只要有足够的政治意愿，就可以在短时间内大幅扩大住房的获取途径。（当然，不幸的是，人们也可能会突然无家可归，因为政策或资本主义经济中几乎没有任何保护措施来防止这种情况发生）。这使得它与教育和种族主义等社会因素区分开来，这些因素需要很长时间才能改变。与长期干预措施（教育）或文化上顽固和历史上根深蒂固的问题（种族主义）相比，住房的可塑性很强。在本文中，我们在两种环境中描述了无家可归的社会状况，比较和对比了概念、原因和后果，以及人们如何动员起来，挑战导致他们住房不安全的条件。在回顾每个环境中造成住房条件的因素时，我们提出了一些普遍的国际原则，以实现体面和安全住房的人权的新方法。
