Right to Decent Housing

The day after a Mary Riddell fantasy, I'd normally look to her for some inspiration.  Yesterday, in the Telegraph, she was writing about housing but I confess I could not understand what she was on about except that we need to build more houses.  Quite!  Riddell suggests we should borrow more to pay for new housing stock. "No other EU country counts public borrowing for building homes as an add-on to public debt,"  which, given the state of most EU economies, does not seem to be particularly sound financial advice.  In Mary Land, rents will repay the balance sheet and we will all feel much better for being better housed.  Blindingly simple - why on earth has no one thought of that before?

Despite Mary's usual muddled thinking, is there a more worrying sub-text in the, ostensibly, reasonable demand for more houses?  "Everyone, as a member of society, has the right to social security and is entitled to realisation  ... social and cultural rights indispensible for his dignity and the free development of his personality (UN Declaration of Human Rights)." One could envisage decent housing (lawyers would have a field day with the definition) becoming a matter of dignity and social justice and, therefore, yet another "rights" obligation on the state?  Now that really would require some public borrowing and creative accounting!