Abstract

In proposing an investigation into the constitutional right to housing, the essay highlights the double conditionality of such social right and the way in which it intersects the issues of property rights, urban rents and urbanism. On one hand, it is a right whose enjoyment is a condition for the effective exercise of other rights (health, environment, labour, respect for private life); on the other hand, a right whose guarantee is conditioned by the understandings of the social function of private property and economic/financial limitations. In order to criticize the push towards home ownership and to highlight the double conditionality of the right to housing, significant theoretical paths and legal decisions (national and international) concerning such right are here analysed.