What's wrong with sharing bathrooms? That's a dorm, or a youth hostel for that matter. It's totally fine. Pretty common all over the world, not just for the poorest.
I've seen some (studio) apartments that have a private bathroom that outside the front door, but still inside the building. I would very much dislike this: to me, it feels like it would break my private space, forcing me to allow for the possibility to run into others each time I go to the bathroom.
Maybe you'd hate this, but that doesn't make it a violation of human rights or anything.
US college students not having individual rooms and bathrooms is a scam though due to the prices the kids pay the college.
> upon a fundamental need for privacy that people have
I don't think you should project your personal preferences with objective needs. Besides, you share bathrooms at the office where you spend 8 hours a day, are you also concerned about running into people there?
So yes, it solves problems in those places where lack of any accommodation is a big housing problem. That is important, but it affects a relatively small proportion even of the homeless (most homeless are not "rough sleepers" who end up sleeping outdoors, but people who bounce between temporary housing exactly or crash with people; e.g. in the UK rough sleepers seem to make up in the region of 5%-10% of homeless people).
It may vary by location, but at least in the UK, for most homeless and poor, the problem is not that they have nowhere to sleep, but that they have the kind of substandard accommodation that people in this thread seems to think will solve their problems, and that they lack security - e.g their accommodation is temporary etc. because even this kind of substandard accommodation is not easily accessible to them in ways they can afford.
If anything, even places where space is extremely costly, one clear way of judging relative luxury level is the ratio of bathrooms to bedrooms.
EDIT: In fact, many places you'd struggle to even get approval for places with communal bathrooms without special exemptions, as it's so far below expected standards that these expectations now often violate government set standards as it's come to be seen as entirely unacceptable to impose it on anyone. E.g. in Norway, the standard rules for a permanent dwelling requires a bathroom with few exceptions, and sets minimum requirements for the size of the bathroom.
The places you see on the market are not free housing, so it doesn't really say anything about what we are discussing.
> entirely unacceptable to impose it on anyone
This is just silly. Nobody wants to impose anything on anyone. We are talking about housing that is provided for free, I don't think anyone is proposing round up people and force them to live there.
They tell us what is the expected standard of housing. You're of course free to believe that poor people should be subjected to conditions most people opt out of, but to argue that this is not the expected standard in developed countries like the ones discussed is disingenuous given that this is demonstrated both by the lack of any serious volume of alternatives most places, and the fact that in many markets it is not even permitted to offer housing with lower standards.
> This is just silly. Nobody wants to impose anything on anyone. We are talking about housing that is provided for free, I don't think anyone is proposing round up people and force them to live there.
If the alternative is no housing, it's disingenuous to suggest there's no pressure involved. Lower the standards, and many people will be without a choice - this is part of the reason why it is outright illegal to provide the kind of substandard housing you're arguing for, because it'd encourage a situation where more people are left without a real choice.
Most of the comments in this thread also makes no mention of free housing. Indeed the comment that started this whole sub-thread made no mention of free, but about providing housing for the poorest cheaper. Your answer to that person made no mention of free, but simply argued there was nothing wrong with sharing bathrooms. My responses have focused on the fact that there are clearly a whole lot of countries where this is considered so far below acceptable standards that it's either not allowed to even provide such housing, or that there's minimal demand for it.
You're of course free to argue for changes to such standards and the provisioning of such substandard housing to poor people rather than to provide for them what is considered the minimum bar of acceptable housing in these places today, but don't pretend you're not arguing for lowering the standard well below what is in many markets the worst housing possible to legally offer.
If you work in Norway you “expect” at least €2-3000 in monthtly salary, but few people argue that this is what you should expect in welfare if you don’t work.
Even in our social democratic paradise, the rule is usually that things you get through the welfare system, paid by taxpayers, should be adequate and humane, but not to the level of someone working full-time.
So those arguments are meaningless. Instead we have to ask if it is adequate, and most people would say that it is. Especially since so many people have lived like that as students.
If you’re not talking about free housing, then it’s just a market economics question, how could then anyone be opposed to more affordable housing? If you don’t like it, don’t rent it. But when someone says “we should do X for the poor”, they are usually talking about the welfare system.
Happy to be proven wrong by the way. (non-sarcastic)
Anyway, in most countries we do build social housing, it's not a question of not building at all, it's a question of being able to build more if you spend less on each unit, and that is obviously the case. As you probably know, bathrooms and kitchens are by far the most expensive rooms, so you can definitely save a lot of money if you share them.
In most places being poor doesn't mean you live in squalor, it just means you have less money. You are still doing your best to keep your place clean etc.
And obviously your neighbours won't be strangers for long.
The original point, although not fully written out, was that the elite schooled grandfather thought it would be more effective to build housing with shared bathrooms, but he neglected the humane aspect(s) of living.
Somewhat ironically you are falling into that same model of thinking.
This is called 'disagreeing'.
There are obviously people who absolutely don't want to share a bathroom with their neighbour, but the "model of thinking" that is the issue is when you're projecting that onto the entire world population. People just have different priorities.
And I imagine it varies a lot between cultures.
Secondly, nobody here that I have seen are suggesting that it's a "human rights violation", but there is also a huge difference between people making the choice of living in a more central location or a higher standard flat and sharing a bathroom with a few people vs. establishing sharing bathrooms with strangers as an acceptable standard to impose on people who lack a choice.
And where exactly do you draw the line, how high standard does free housing have to have? Middle class? Upper middle class?
No, students are not lesser humans, but neither are poor people forced to deal with the effects of any policy changes to allow the lowering of expected standards of the housing provided.
Many places - such as in Norway where I grew up - the provisioning of housing units without bathrooms is only permitted in very limited situations exactly because it's consider unjustified to create a situation where even private landlords can exploit lack of choice for the poorest to coerce them into tolerating situations we'd not want to impose on others.
As for students, checking student housing for Oslo now, the largest amount of sharing of bathrooms I can find in "dorms" is sharing with one other person in the very smallest housing that is explicitly not considered suitable for e.g. couples or families. But in Norway at least, the norm is also not to push students into dorms, and people don't live in them for the long term.
So I expect that housing for the poor should at least not be worse than the standards we've come to see as the bare minimum to consider a housing unit intended for the long term to be habitable. Yes, the standards are lower elsewhere, especially for students, largely on the basis that it's a choice that often involves a good deal of privilege, and when/where dorms are expected or required it is often at least sold as part of the socialisation. In places where dorms are often expected, you're free to not apply to those universities or pick ones with higher standard dorms without losing the ability to go to university.
Poor people often face a significantly reduced opportunity to realistically choose without facing sleeping rough, and the notion that they have a genuine choice itself tends to come from a highly privileged attitude.
What does this mean? It would seem that if legions of middle-class people can adapt, why couldn't poor people?
> the notion that they have a genuine choice itself tends to come from a highly privileged attitude
You keep repeating that your opponents are privileged, that is not an argument for anything, it's just random ad hominem. Not that it even makes sense.
But in any case, even if someone has little choice, that doesn't mean that it's reasonable to say that a gift "imposes" on the receiver. If I give a beggar a hamburger, I am not forcing him to eat meat, whether he has much else to eat or not.
And please try to understand what is being discussed. In this instance I merely pointed out that "communal facilities that would rapidly fall into disrepair" is not a proper argument, since there are plenty of communal facilities in excellent condition, just as there are lots of privately owned slums. Your reply has nothing whatsoever to do with that.
If I've been downvoted for saying dorms are temporary shelters, not lifetime homes, then so be it; HN is just as bad as the rest of them.
We're all gonna get fucked over here at one point.