Housing rights - The new benchmarks for housing policy in Europe?

Abstract

Rights to housing are regularly proposed as the solution to poor housing and homelessness by advocates and campaigning organizations. This approach is viewed as having the critical international acclaim and legal clarity to cut through the Gordian knots of political wrangling, resource deficiencies, programmatic and policy conflicts, and theoretical dissonance in housing approaches. Of course, most (States) have ratified rights to housing at an international level in a range of instruments, from the United Nations (UN) to the Council of Europe. Implementation of these rights is obliged and promoted within both a programmatic approach, as well as a violations and remedies approach (opportunities for litigation in the event of breaches). Each ratifying State regularly produces monitoring reports for the relevant international treaty body on how these rights are being given effect, legally, at policy level, and programmatically. However, in the age of New Public Management (NPM) there are regular attempts to reduce such internationally established human rights norms to the level of nonlegal approaches, such as customer charters rights to "participation" and administrative complaint systems. There are, however, important contextual issues for the development of housing rights within industrial economies with hegemonic housing market ideologies and developed welfare systems, especially in European countries. The Council of Europe has recently developed a modern monitoring procedure in relation to Article 31 of the Revised European Social Charter 1996. This defines many international obligations in relation to housing rights, such as those relating to housing adequacy, affordability, reduction of homelessness, etc. The development of this machinery for measuring European States compliance with housing rights standards has significant implications in the context of the new European Constitution. As currently proposed, this would establish rights to housing with the same obligations as set out in Article 31, on a legally binding basis under European Union (EU) law.

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