Homelessness, Criminal Responsibility, and the Pathologies of Policy: Triangulating on a Constitutional Right to Housing

Abstract

The importance of a roof over one's head seems clear to most of us. But private charity, the insurance markets, and the regulatory state offer no guarantees that this most elemental need will be even minimally met. This Article focuses on the continuing denial of any federal constitutional right to even minimal housing,' despite the sense that basic values such as meaningful liberty, equality, community, fundamental human flourishing, and basic capacity development seem to suggest a right. Given that arguments for a constitutional right to even minimal3 housing from these clearly basic values alone have by themselves not yet moved the needle, this Article takes a different approach. The focus herein supplements the basic values arguments with other important considerations that triangulate, or converge, on a federal constitutional right to housing. These considerations, in their joint convergence, collectively exert additional moral and intellectual pressure in favor of recognizing the constitutional right in question.