Housing is a Human Right
- Safe, stable, affordable housing was first recognized as a human right in the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights and has since been reaffirmed in many international treaties, resolutions, and declarations.
- Housing is critical to many other facets of life, including physical and mental health, quality of life, access to education, economic outcomes among many others.
- However, simply naming housing as a human right may not necessarily accomplish desired outcomes. Given the small number of regions and nations that have enacted housing as a human right, there is not a strong set of evidence demonstrating that this approach is the key to solving issues of housing affordability and availability. Examples from across the globe show the complexity of addressing housing crises, even when housing is declared a human right. (Ex: Scotland, South Africa and France)
- Scotland has incorporated this commitment into its legislation and budget in multiple ways, including homelessness prevention legislation and means-tested benefits that help meet housing costs. Between 1987 and 2003, Scotland passed a series of acts that framed housing as a right, which made local governments responsible for the provision of housing for people unintentionally experiencing homelessness within 90 days and which allows people to sue if their right to housing is not respected. Yet, despite the focus on human rights, Scotland has continued to struggle with housing access in the wake of recent economic downturns.
- In 2007 France adopted the Droit au Logement Opposable, which prioritizes vulnerable groups for social housing and provides them with the ability to take legal action if they have not received accommodation. Yet, DALO has been unable to meet its goals due, in part, to lack of adequate resources and lack of awareness.
- South Africa’s constitution was amended to guarantee the right to adequate housing, yet seventeen years later, this has not met its goals.
Framing housing as a human right may be an important first step to solving housing challenges, but the evidence base suggests that simply naming housing as a human right in isolation is likely insufficient to achieve affordable and accessible housing for all. Rather, this framing must be paired with adequate funding, timelines for progress, and pathways to compel compliance.
State of housing crisis: According to the UN:
- 1.6 billion people around the world lack adequate housing and access to basic services
- Projections that this could rise to 3 billion by 2030
- Estimated that 100 million people worldwide are homeless
- Rent-burdened: Over 40% of households in the U.S. are rent-burdened (spend more than 30% of their income on rent)
- One other factor: big corporations like AirBNB are buying up homes and renting them for sky high prices.
Problems in housing market:
- Affordability
- Availability
- Quality of housing
- Segregation
- Disinvestment/Vacancy
- Right to Home (Housing as a Human Right)
Confluence of 5 factors:
(i) Financialization of Housing:
a) the phenomenon occurs when housing is treated as a commodity—a vehicle for wealth and investment—rather than a social good.
b) With roots in the 2008 financial crisis, the impact of the shift from housing as a place to build a home to housing as an investment has been devastating. This includes millions of evictions as a result of foreclosures in countries most affected by the Global Economic Crisis.
c) The process of financialization increasingly divorces housing from its purpose as shelter by using it to generate profits in financial markets
- Global real estate represents nearly 60 per cent of the value of all global assets or $217 trillion USD—with residential real estate comprising $163 trillion USD or 75 percent.
- Accelerated by the 2008 Global Economic Crisis, but has been happening over decades
d)Implications
- Decreased transparency: opaque home ownership makes regulation and accountability difficult
- Decreased affordability: treating housing like financial assets – which investors expect to continuously increase in value
- Increased instability: large owners can absorb vacancy and turnover costs in the pursuit of extracting maximum rent
(ii) Logistics – Buildings are hard to build and their management is complicated.
(iii) Geography – Buildings are hard to move and land varies greatly across space
(iv) Racialization – gap between wealth of white and black
(v) Socialization – The American Dream and single-family, home ownership
Case study: Blackstone group:
- The financialization of housing is most clearly exemplified by massive real estate investment companies that buy up homes (institutional home-buyers)
- Blackstone Group, private equity firm, is one of the world’s biggest landlords
- Bought up $5.5 billion of single family homes in the U.S. after the 2008 crash (encouraged by the government)
- Now purchasing a lot of multi-family rentals (apartments) globally
NYC local law 18:
(i) Passed in 2023, the law mandates that all short-term rentals are registered with the City to ensure enforcement of existing laws
(ii) Legal short term rentals are any properties where no more than two people are hosted, the host resides in the dwelling unit, and where guests have access to all parts of the dwelling unit – $5,000 fine for violating
(iii) Designed to bring back thousands of properties to the rental market for city residents – cracking down on AirBnB (now valued at over $100 billion)
(iv) AirBnb traditionally viewed as individuals renting their spaces, but research shows that bookings are increasingly concentrated on a small number of professional landlords who act like “miniature hotel companies”
(v) Not just NYC – cities across Europe are attempting to reign in AirBnB with varying success .
Minimum criteria for adequate housing:
Adequate housing must provide more than four walls and a roof. A number of conditions must be met before particular forms of shelter can be considered to constitute “adequate housing.” These elements are just as fundamental as the basic supply and availability of housing. For housing to be adequate, it must, at a minimum, meet the following criteria:
- Security of tenure: Housing is not adequate if its occupants do not have a degree of tenure security which guarantees legal protection against forced evictions, harassment and other threats.
- Availability of services, materials, facilities and infrastructure: Housing is not adequate if its occupants do not have safe drinking water, adequate sanitation, energy for cooking, heating, lighting, food storage or refuse disposal.
- Affordability: Housing is not adequate if its cost threatens or compromises the occupants’ enjoyment of other human rights.
- Habitability: Housing is not adequate if it does not guarantee physical safety or provide adequate space, as well as protection against the cold, damp, heat, rain, wind, other threats to health and structural hazards.
- Accessibility: Housing is not adequate if the specific needs of disadvantaged and marginalized groups are not taken into account.
- Location: Housing is not adequate if it is cut off from employment opportunities, health-care services, schools, childcare centres and other social facilities, or if located in polluted or dangerous areas.
- Cultural adequacy: Housing is not adequate if it does not respect and take into account the expression of cultural identity.
Challenges in regulating housing sector:
Regulating the housing sector while treating housing as a right involves several significant challenges:
(i) Governments must find ways to fund affordable housing initiatives, which can strain public budgets, especially in times of economic downturns. Is the Government’s will for affordable housing be sustainable and congruent with the budget available?
(ii) Ensuring adequate housing for all, particularly in growing urban areas, requires careful planning to balance housing supply with demand. This can be complicated by factors like land scarcity, zoning regulations, and the need for infrastructure development. Whether adequate legislations can be made which can withstand the pressure from the influential ‘Blackstones’?
(iii) Regulations such as rent controls, while intended to make housing more affordable, can sometimes lead to unintended consequences like reduced incentives for landlords to maintain or improve properties, or for developers to build new housing, potentially worsening housing shortages.
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