COVID-19 cases and deaths have been concentrated in nursing homes, homeless shelters, and other overcrowded housing situations. Just as we crowd and encroach on wildlife habitats, a major cause of the current global pandemic, our species also needs space for well-being. This article describes the results from a series of global roundtables on housing led by UBC. In my book, Community Vitality, I modified Maslow’s scale of hierarchy to include ecological and social well-being to his model. You will notice that at the bottom of the triangle the second imperative is access to housing under Basic Needs.
Building back better must be grounded on access to housing as a basic human right. Finland has solved its housing problem by providing housing to all its homeless.
