What is the right to housing?

A fundamental human right since 1948

Adequate housing was recognized as a human right in 1948, upon the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It is a universal right, accepted and applicable throughout the world as a fundamental human right. Several international treaties affirm that governments have the obligation to promote and protect this right. Today, there are more than 12 UN instruments that recognize the right to housing. Despite that, the implementation of the right to adequate housing is still a major challenge.

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'Inadequate, unaffordable, insecure': UK housing's decline and fall

GUARDIAN | September 2013 // By Patrick Butler

 

It tends to be assumed that poverty and social injustice are the domain of backward developing nations; when they are identified closer to home, as the UN rapporteur Rachel Rolnik has done in her measured report on Britain's housing , it provokes a storm of official outrage and denial. (...) Rolnik's approach is framed by international human rights law, to which the UK is a signatory. The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (articles one and two) obliges the UK to "take steps to ensure and sustain the progressive realisation of the right to adequate housing." What this means, in essence, is that housing should be accessible, affordable, habitable and secure to all citizens, and that governments bound by the covenant have a positive duty to fulfil these obligations.The UK has been an powerful inspiration to the world in this regard, especially for when it comes to housing the low-paid and vulnerable, says Rolnik. It has a proud history of public housing, and a welfare safety net that is the envy of much of the world. Her conclusion, however, is that this achievement is being eroded and that a once progressive housing policy is going into reverse.

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The housing market – unsustainable asset bubble or ladder to prosperity?

POSITIVE MONEY | October, 2013 // By Fran Boait

 

But the question whether you should rent or buy, forces another question – what is a house for after all? Is it a home to live in, something everyone needs? Or is it really an asset that everyone should aspire to own? You could say it can be both – but is that even possible? One consequence of everyone scrambling to get on the housing ladder has been house prices have been rising much faster than wages, which means that houses become less and less affordable.

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What you need to know about the housing market

NEF | November, 2013 // By: James Meadway

 

Are we entering a new bubble? Warnings have been sounded over the last few months that the UK’s long-delayed recovery contains the dangerous early signs of a fresh speculative explosion. House prices in London shot up by 10% over the last month, with over a third of sales paid for in full with cash – an indication that hot money is flooding into the market.

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Look to the Heygate Estate for what's wrong with London's housing

NEW STATEMENT | November 2013 // By Ian Steadman

 

At Elephant & Castle you can see exactly how London's mixed communities are being forced to give way to regeneration. For everything that’s wrong with London’s housing and built environment, look to the Heygate Estate, and to what will replace it. Completed in 1974, its 1,200 homes housed more than 3,000 people in spacious, well-lit rooms with all the modern conveniences.

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Squatting the frontline

Squatting the frontline - It’s criminal to criminalise the homeless

STRIKE MAG via SQUASH | October 2013 // By John McDonnell MP

 

Britain is facing the worst housing crisis since the Second World War. There are 40,000 homeless. On an average night 4000 people sleep on the streets. The sell-off of council houses and the failure to build new homes has resulted in 1.7 million households currently being on housing waiting lists. Most families in London and the South East will have a 10 year wait before being offered a council or housing association property. Overcrowding has become endemic. (...) Inevitably, faced with homelessness and witnessing a property stand empty, some people will take what can only be described as a completely rational decision and squat an empty property. From the survey figures produced by the homelessness charity Crisis, we know that 6% of the homeless population will be squatting each night and that 40% of single homeless people have squatted at some time.

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Squatting changes threat to homeless

THE GUARDIAN | December 2013 // letters

 

Winter is a difficult time for the UK's homeless population (Report, 29 November). We are concerned at both the effect of existing legislation, which has made squatting in residential properties a criminal offence, and the proposals being made by some within the government to extend the law to encompass commercial properties. We fear that any further criminalisation which removes the option of seeking shelter in abandoned and unused commercial property would have disastrous consequences.

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revenge of the repossessed - alternatives for the housing crisis

RED PEPPER | July 2011 By Stuart Hodkinson

 

We urgently need to resist the coalition’s current housing onslaught, yet resistance has so far been slow to take off. A new housing coalition has been launched called Housing Emergency, which involves Defend Council Housing with a number of trade union and housing groups, including the Christian body Housing Justice, and the more community-based direct action of London Coalition Against Poverty (see www.defendcouncilhousing.org.uk). It aims to bring grass-roots pressure to bear on MPs and councillors in opposing a raft of government measures.

 

Perhaps the anti-cuts movement’s lack of inspiring alternatives to decommodify the provision of a decent, secure, affordable home partly explains why some housing activists appear more inclined to take advantage of the ‘big society’ agenda than resist it. The opportunities for genuine community ownership and control being floated as part of the localism bill might be limited, but they are attractive to people looking to generate more co-operative housing schemes.

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