Right to housing: Difference between revisions
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[[File:Housing-is-a-human-right-graphic-No-Gods-No-Masters.png|thumb|right|350px|graphic from https://www.no-gods-no-masters.com]] ''"Right to housing" / "Housing is a human right" ''is a concept developed in national/international law and advocacy, particularly since the mid 20th century. <br/> <br/> Twitter search query link: [https://twitter.com/search?q=#right2housing%20OR%20#righttohousing&src=typed_query&f=live #right2housing OR #righttohousing]<br/>
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=== Socio-economic rights as 'poor cousins' of civil/political rights? ===
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"Socio-economic rights, including the right to housing, are often perceived to be the poor cousins of the rights world. States and commentators sometimes argue they are merely moral exhortations, and their content is perceived to be vaguer than so-called civil and political rights, and thus obligations harder to define or enforce (Eide and Rosas, 2001 p. 3-7; Bates, 2007 p. 263-65). However, in the last 20 years, the content and scope of the right to housing in international law has been given a significant degree of specificity. This has occurred through the work of UN expert bodies, activists, advocates and scholars."
Article 2(1) of ICESCR, specifies state obligations:<blockquote>''"Each State Party to the present Covenant undertakes to take steps, individually and through international assistance and co-operation, especially economic and technical, to the maximum of its available resources, with a view to achieving progressively the full realization of the rights recognized in the present Covenant by all appropriate means, including particularly the adoption of legislative measures."'' </blockquote>
=== 'Minimum core' socio-economic rights ===
"States have immediate obligations to ensure that every individual enjoys each element of the right to the level of a ‘'''minimum core'''’. For instance, street homelessness clearly violates the minimum core of the right, as do forced evictions (UNCESCR, 1997; UNCESCR, 1991); though in many respects the minimum core remains contested as a concept and difficult to apply in practice (Young, 2008)." -[Hohmann 2019].
Young, Katharine G. (2008). "The Minimum Core of Economic and Social Rights: A Concept in Search of Content." ''The Yale Journal of International Law'', 33:113-175.
"The concept of the 'minimum core' seeks to establish a minimum legal content for the notoriously indeterminate claims of economic and social rights. ''By recognizing the “minimum essential levels” of the rights to food, health, housing, and education'', it is a concept trimmed, honed, and shorn of deontological excess. ''It reflects a “minimalist” rights strategy, which implies that maximum gains are made by minimizing goals. It also trades
"Yet rights-ambition is a difficult stance, and even minimalist ambitions can be misplaced. Critics of the concept have suggested that paring down such rights to an essential core threatens the broader goals of economic and social rights, or pretends a determinacy that does not exist. A long-standing criticism faults the minimum core for directing our attention only to the performance of developing states, leaving the legal discourse of economic and social rights beyond the reach of those facing material deprivation in the middle or high income countries."
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Key provisions concerning housing were set out in the '''Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR)''', adopted by the UN and signed by the United States in 1948. This is considered a declaration, to inform subsequent binding treaties, rather than being binding in itself.
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