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What are housing rights?

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Adequate housing is more than just a roof over one's head.

Housing rights are human rights.

General Comment 4, adopted by the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights in 1991, lays out the seven criteria of adequate housing:

  • security of tenure
  • adequate services, materials, infrastructure
  • affordability
  • habitability
  • accessibility
  • location
  • cultural adequacy

Housing rights involve more than the right to access to shelter. They include the following indivisible, interdependent and interrelated human rights:

  • the human right to adequate housing
  • the human right to an adequate standard of living
  • the human right to access to safe drinking water and sanitation
  • the human right to the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health
  • the human right to a safe and healthy environment
  • the human right of the child to an environment appropriate for physical and mental development
  • the human right to access to resources, including energy for cooking, heating, and lighting
  • the human right of access to basic services, schools, transportation and employment options
  • the human right to affordability in housing, such that other basic needs are not threatened or compromised
  • the human right to freedom from discrimination in access to housing and related services based on sex, race and ethnicity, or any other status
  • the human right to choose one's residence, to determine where and how to live and to freedom of movement
  • the human right to freedom from arbitrary interference with one's privacy, family or home
  • the human right to security, including legal security of tenure
  • the human right to equal protection of the law and judicial remedies for the redress of violations of the human right to adequate housing
  • the human right to protection from forced evictions and the destruction or demolition of one's home including in situations of military occupation, international and civil armed conflict, establishment and construction of alien settlements, population transfer, and development projects.
 
Too see a full explanation of what housing rights are, please read the UN Fact Sheet on The Right to Adequate Housing.
Related docs: 
Download file
UN Factsheet on the Right to Adequate Housing
January 01 2010
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The Pinheiro Principles

United Nations Principles on Housing and Property Restitution for Refugees and Displaced Persons. This report contains the full text of an important international standard that outlines the rights of refugees and displaced persons to return not only to their countries, but also to their original homes and lands.

September 06 2003
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The human right to adequate housing 1945-1999: A Chronology of UN Activity

Authors: David Hulchanski and Scott Leckie

February 01 2000