The right to housing in theory and in practice: going beyond the West (original) (raw)
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Housing and the right to the city: introduction to the special issue
Open access: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14616718.2014.936179#.VQVYUxz40mw In recent years responses to neoliberal urbanism and social injustice have been framed in terms of ‘the right to the city’, both by academics and social movements. This special issue presents case studies of housing struggles from around the globe that are framed within a right to the city perspective. In this introduction to the special issue we first present a short synopsis of the idea of a right to the city, as put forward by Henri Lefebvre; second, we briefly discuss earlier work that has used a right to the city lens to look at housing; and third, we provide an overview of the papers that make up this special issue. Keywords: Henri Lefebvre; right to the city; housing; private property; social exclusion; social movements
‘Right to the city’ and the New Urban Agenda: learning from the right to housing
Territory, Politics, Governance, 2018
The 'right to the city' has influenced the New Urban Agenda and other global and national urban policies. In the process, the meaning has narrowed towards realizing human rights in cities. Pursuing the right to housing in South Africa has established an important duty on the state to ensure universal access to decent accommodation. This has enabled millions of the poorest households to obtain improved habitation, and others to gain protection against forced evictions. However, the single-minded focus on state delivery of mass housing has been unable to keep pace with the rising level of need. It has also neglected the economic requirements of households and is proving to be financially unsustainable. Consequently, the housing right has not lifted many people out of income poverty or created more inclusive cities. A rightsbased approach needs to be complemented by collective action and strengthened capabilities to drive progress across a broader agenda than just housing, particularly at the local level where there are major obstacles to change. A purposeful approach to unlocking urban land and collective efforts to spur socioeconomic development are vital.
During the last three decades processes of urban development have spread speedily across the globe, transforming hundreds of cities into primary sites for the implementation of a neoliberal agenda. As expected, this global phenomenon brings with it a number of negative consequences for the lives of disadvantaged urban residents. Privatization and commercialization of public space and housing stocks, increasing gentrification of neighbourhoods and deregulation of the housing sector are only a few examples of the adverse scenario that people from less well-off backgrounds have to face. These processes constitute capital-driven strategies that have been enforced by displacing, evicting, marginalizing and criminalizing communities who are, at the same time excluded from any participation in the decision-making process of the urban restructuring. These actions, carried out by corporations, investors and developers and closely backed up by entrepreneurial governments ) or "centaur-states" (Wacquant, 2012 are embedded in an accelerated process of accumulation by dispossession (Harvey, 2008) that has exacerbated inequality and widened the gap between the rich and the poor. The effects of this growing polarization in the distribution of power and wealth can be easily observed in the spatial forms of the cities, in which gated communities, glittering city centre developments and privatized areas under non-stop surveillance coexist in sharp separation with favelas, precarious and informal settlements and impoverished working class neighbourhoods .
Can housing rights be applied to modern housing systems?
International Journal of Law in the Built Environment, 2010
PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to outline and examine the growing corpus of housing rights and assess their relevance and applicability to complex contemporary housing systems across the world.Design/methodology/approachThe paper sets out the principal instruments and commentaries on housing rights developed by the United Nations, regional and other bodies. It assesses their relevance in the context of contemporary analysis of housing systems, organized and directed by networks of legal and other professionals within particular domains.FindingsHousing rights instruments are accepted by all States across the world at the level of international law, national constitutions and laws. The findings suggest that there are significant gaps in the international law conception and framework of housing rights, and indeed, human rights generally, which create major obstacles for the effective implementation of these rights. There is a preoccupation with one element of housing systems, that...
International Journal of Housing Policy, 2019
Urbanites worldwide fight for their right to housing and the city in ways that encompass what Westernized and masculine takes on ‘radical politics’ make of them. This intervention proposes a decolonial, grounded and feminist approach to investigate how resistance to housing precarity emerges from uncanny places, uninhabitable ‘homes’ and marginal propositions. This is a form of ‘dwelling as difference’ that is able to challenge our compromised ‘habitus’ of home at its root, from the ground of its everyday unfolding. The article argues that only looking within those cracks, and aligning to their politics, new radical housing futures can be built with urbanites worldwide.
The Right to Housing: from an International, European and Comparative Viewpoint
2019
Less than a year ago, a 55 years old elder man committed suicide when he was going to be evicted from her house in Cornella. He didn’t have enough money to pay the rent, and he didn’t have any alternative place to live on. Unfortunately, this case is not an exception, the platform for the protection of those affected by mortgages (PAH) deals every week with hundreds of cases of people who cannot afford to pay their mortgage. That seems contradictory if we take into account that the Spanish Constitution establishes the right to housing, and that the public authorities should promote that everyone has access to a decent habitation.