Litigating Housing Rights: Experiences and Issues

Abstract

This article focuses on how complaints about housing rights violations by states have been (and can be) litigated before courts and other judicial or quasi-judicial decision-making bodies. In doing so, it considers how courts and other bodies have dealt with such rights when these have been brought before them, with the author discussing jurisprudence from international and regional human rights-monitoring mechanisms, as well as case-law from numerous national jurisdictions. The article opens with an introduction to the right to housing and the way in which the different aspects of that right and the obligations imposed by it have been litigated, interpreted and adjudicated. This is followed by a discussion of some of the practical issues faced housing rights litigants, such as forum selection, standing, the formulation of argumentation, evidence and remedies. The conclusion examines the possible outcomes of litigating housing rights, both positive and negative.

Keywords: housing rights, economic and social rights, human rights law, public interest law, litigation strategy