We’ve heard a lot over the last few years, both in Vermont and nationally, about how “health care is a human right.” But what about housing as a human right?

If we haven’t been hearing much about that, it’s because we haven’t been paying attention.

Adequate housing as an international human right has been a familiar theme in the United Nations for years. In fact, it’s centerpiece of the message that the U.N.’s housing rapporteur delivers regularly to the General Assembly. The current rapporteur, appointed last year, is Leilani Farha, executive director of Canada Without Poverty, a lawyer. Her full title is “Special Rapporteur on adequate housing as a component of the right to an adequate standard of living.”

That title derives from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted in 1948, which, while not declaring housing a right per se, does say this:

Article 25.

Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services …

and this, foreshadowing the spirit of fair housing law:

Article 13.

• (1) Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each state.

Over the years through assorted covenants and agreements, we learn by browsing U.N. documents, housing has achieved recognition as a human right.

Here we pause to note that much of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (which is worth reading, if refresh your memory of how many rights remain unfulfilled) has been willfully ignored by many U.N. members. And of course the U.N. has negligible power to enforce compliance. (We seem to recall that the U.N. brought its “water is a human right” message to Detroit last year. How did that turn out?)

We turn now to the website of the U.N.’s High Commissioner for Human Rights:

“Increasingly viewed as a commodity, housing is most importantly a human right. Under international law, to be adequately housed means having secure tenure – not having to worry about being evicted or having your home or lands taken away. It means living somewhere that is in keeping with your culture, and having access to appropriate services, schools, and employment.

“The right to housing is interdependent with a number of other human rights: rights to health, to education, to employment, but also to non-discrimination and equality, to freedom of association or freedom from violence, and ultimately to the right to life.

Too often violations of the right to housing occur with impunity. In part, this is because at the domestic level housing is rarely treated as a human right…”

The rapporteur’s 2014 report notes that “under international human rights law, it is the State that is held responsible for the compliance with international human rights to which it is bound.” That means national governments, but also, in the case of housing, “state/provincial and municipal governments.”

She acknowledges that ”the evolving nature and diversification of the State and the multiplicity of actors who may be involved in fulfilling its obligations under international human rights law make implementation all the more complicated.”

She can say that again, in housing’s case.