The Guardian tells us of something called The Shift. An international plan for how housing must be dealt with:

Here’s how rocketing rents and unaffordable house prices can be fixed

Leilani Farha

Well, we have ideas about that too.

We have the chance to guarantee the human right to housing – rather than a real-life game of Monopoly. We must take it

Human rights law isn’t the way we’d do it though. The full proposals are here. Including this one which we think is remarkable. So, remark we will:

1. States must ensure investors in residential real estate comply with human rights by

ii. requiring a human rights impact assessment be carried out by parties prior to a purchase of property or its sale or by the owner before upgrades and renovations are undertaken. These assessments must be made available to all residents and where negative human rights outcomes are indicated, tenants must have access to recourse mechanisms;

A human rights assessment is required before the landlord comes around to paint the place. Note that it’s not if he doesn’t - but if he does.

The rest of it is at about that level of silliness too. But underlying the foolishness is a grand and terrible mistake. It’s all about how the current stock of housing is to be regulated. There is nothing that we’ve seen in there about how the stock of housing should be changed. Which is, as they say, problematic, for the way for tenants to gain power over landlords is not thorough bureaucracy but supply. If there is housing demand of x and housing units up for rent of x plus 1 then tenants have power over landlords. So, the task is to increase the amount of rental housing - all housing in fact - available so as to put power in the hands of the consumer, not the producer.

Or, more simply, the assumption is made that housing is a zero sum game, that there’s some fixed amount and we must manage relations within that limit. Nonsense, entire ludicrosity. It’s entirely possible to change the supply of housing and thus relations within that market. And increasing that supply tips those relations further toward the renter and away from the landlord.

The proof is The Shift Directives, which I am launching today in the European parliament. These are the world’s first set of international recommendations that challenge the financialisation of housing head on, using human rights standards to lead the way forward. Drafted in consultation with leading experts, the directives guide governments and investors on timely issues such as short-term rental platforms like Airbnb, student housing, the banking sector, and “renovictions” – the process of renovating a property in order to raise the rent.

Among those leading experts apparently not one single one who can even recognise a market, let alone grasp subtleties like supply and demand. Which, when discussing the housing market would seem to be a bit of a handicap.

Abject piffle but no doubt there will be some who attempt to push it forward.