Housing as a Right
Katharine Young and Malcolm Langford (eds) Oxford Handbook on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (2022 Forthcoming)
16 Pages Posted: 24 Sep 2021
Date Written: September 21, 2021
Abstract
This chapter discusses the right to housing as a human right. After setting out some of the key conceptual and theoretical questions around the right, the chapter canvasses significant international, regional and domestic constitutional protections of the right. It uses a careful reading of the right as interpreted to demonstrate the ways in which the right to housing offers a riposte to the current critique that economic, social and cultural rights are inattentive to, and unresponsive to, issues of inequality and structural injustice, and that they provide only minimal protections, rather than reaching toward more robust standards of human flourishing. In fact, the chapter’s reading of the interpretation and application of the right to housing demonstrates that those interpreting and the right have consistently paid attention to inequality, and to structural injustices of the global economy.
Keywords: right to housing, socio-economic rights, human rights, inequality, structural injustice, United Nations Special Rapporteurs, rights
JEL Classification: K00, K19, K33, I31, R31,
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation