Social function of property, adequate housing and international human rights law

Abstract

This paper introduces the added value of a broad approach to human rights to balance the relationship between tenant’s right to adequate housing and landlord’s right to property. Firstly, it presents briefly how international human rights law treaties and monitoring bodies have dealt with, and chosen not to deal with, the right to property. Secondly, it introduces the right to adequate housing as proclaimed as a social right in international human rights law. Third, it argues that the human rights community, particularly those working on economic, social and cultural rights – such as housing – should engage with the right to property directly. Finally, the paper articulates the beginnings of a proposal to reinterpret property and its social function from a holistic approach to human rights, one that takes adequate housing and other socio-economic rights seriously when holding public authorities to account.