The right to housing is a human right with broad but frequently overlooked implications, particularly in the urban environment. This difficulty is heightened in the context of what is known as the “financialization of housing”. Financialization involves the interconnections between global financial markets and housing, and, at the extreme, has prompted a climate in which housing is conceived less as a social good and more as a commodity. The result of the financialization turn is cities with a severe lack of affordable housing, a reality that is now a global phenomenon. This naturally leads to economic exclusions and displacements from cities, but, on a deeper level, also entails major collective consequences for the social and cultural fabric. Financialization thus threatens the right to housing in cities, particularly when the right is examined and understood in its full sense. And yet, cities have a duty to ensure the right to housing even in the face of financialization. Drawing on the jurisprudence of the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights through its individual communications procedure, the European Court of Human Rights, and domestic cases from South Africa and the United States, this paper aims to elucidate this duty of cities in the realm of housing. A substantive rather than purely procedural shape of protection for the right to housing is pushed, which deliberates the connections between housing and the wider societal context, and the implicated concerns of resources, property, and urban community. In present times, our appreciation of home as a necessary nexus of safety, comfort, and productivity has come to the fore, as have our fears around economic insecurity, forcing us to confront and closely interrogate the right to housing.
Affordable Housing Reimagined
