Article 11(1) of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (1966) recognised a right to adequate housing, and the UN committee's General Comment No. 4 (1991) spelled out what adequate means: legal security of tenure, services, affordability, habitability, accessibility, suitable location and cultural adequacy - explicitly more than a roof. Against this runs the treatment of housing as a financial asset, through mortgage securitisation, buy-to-let, REITs and the post-2008 bulk purchase of homes by institutional funds. UN special rapporteurs Rolnik and Farha named this financialisation as the central obstacle to the right, and Aalbers supplied the analytic frame. Courts in India, South Africa and Brazil have meanwhile made elements of the right justiciable in eviction cases.
The opposition organises most contemporary housing politics: whether a dwelling is a claim on society or a store of value decides who is evicted, who is subsidised and what actually gets built. It is why security of tenure and location, rather than completions, are increasingly the test applied to housing policy.
See it on the timeline →