Housing is a Human Right

 ... not a human guarantee.

When someone sanctimoniously claims something is a "Human Right", they often mean that they should get it for free.

So what does it mean that housing is a human right?

According to the UN, the right to housing means a place to live that is safe, affordable, accessible, culturally appropriate, and provides access to basic services, such as water, sanitation, and electricity.

Clearly 'housing' doesn't mean a double-brick quarter-acre block in a major city. The UN uses it interchangeably with 'shelter'. Dorms would count.

There are also lots of things that the right to housing is not, like the right to land or real property. Social justice doesn't mean someone else pays your mortgage.

While we're unpacking definitions here, the 'financialisation' and 'commodification' of housing is often blamed for poor affordability.

That is incorrect.

A commodity is a tradeable product. If houses were not tradeable, they wouldn't be transferable. You wouldn't be able to receive one. Or maybe that suits you fine; no one gets to own houses. But calling for mass expropriation goes a lot further than the UDHR, and may be irrelevant. You can confiscate all the houses and still not provide housing.

Houses are financialised because they cost a lot of money to exchange, build, and maintain. Through the magic of mathematics you can work the cashflow backwards to find out how much they're worth. If they weren't financialised, they wouldn't get built. Again, maybe a tent on a vacant lot suits you fine. That's technically 'housing' too. 

Unpopular opinion: housing needs to become more, not less, commodified to the point where they are as interchangeable as supermarket snack foods. Housing that could be mass-produced to a single wide standard could potentially not require financing.

As a landlord, I am part of a system that provides that human right.

However, when encountering the (thankfully rare) problem tenant, I wonder why there aren't any symmetric obligations to go with that right.

For example, the obligation to maintain (improve would be nice...) the housing to which you are entitled. 

A human responsibility and obligation towards housing can be derived from individual obligations to promote human rights, with housing being one of those human rights. You can't claim to respect human rights if you trash someone else's.

It's hard to go from there to, "just pay for the bond clean or I'll call the UN", but it might be worth a shot.