France's Villepin announces bill allowing homeless to sue government

Link: France's Villepin announces bill allowing homeless to sue government - Europe - International Herald Tribune.

My friend Pierre wrote to me recently telling me of the "right to housing" by decree likely to see the light of day in France very shortly. It is a fascinating proposal placing the right to housing along side the right to health care and education.

It is such a good idea that it gives me pause to consider. My preference is clearly against government decree and the distribution of resources is, in my view, the responsibility of individuals, not states. But this has to necessarily go along with a change in property notions and ethical imperatives. And that will take time, it doesn't help now - and there are a lot of people that need help now.

In France, perhaps more than anywhere else, such decrees in fact turn out to be the product of popular ethical imperatives. Yet the problems of large central governments and central planning are well known to be the road to serfdom. Are the French there yet? The gating factor in France is the willingness of the people to both speak out and take action, and their rather healthy and laid back approach to government and bureaucracy.

I approve of the "right to housing" but I would rather see it come to be as the product of a generally accepted revision of our property notions where the responsibility for its execution lay not in the hands of government but in the hands of you and me.

The homeless really should be allowed to sue the rich.