The Right to Housing — Between Utopia and Justiciable Entitlement
Book project by Anna Młynarska-Sobaczewska
Working title: The Right to Housing—Between Utopia and Justiciable Entitlement
We invite contributions to an edited volume exploring the evolving concept of the right to housing across different legal systems, policy frameworks, and it socio-economic contexts.
Main object
The right to housing is widely recognized in international human rights discourse, including frameworks developed by the United Nations. However, its legal status, enforceability, and practical realization remain deeply contested. This project seeks to bring together interdisciplinary and comparative perspectives on how state authorities on national and local level, and national courts engage with the ensuring and/or facilitating to fulfill housing needs of people: Does this right take a specific form in social policies? To what extent is it a stable concept protected by law? And can we say it is justiciable in some scope? We would like to critically examine whether the right to housing constitutes: a genuine, enforceable legal entitlement, or a normative aspiration shaped by political, economic, and institutional constraints.
Specific research questions
While the right to housing has been widely recognized in international human rights law, existing
literature tends to focus either on doctrinal analysis or isolated national case studies. There is a
lack of systematic, comparative work that connects constitutional frameworks with actual
housing policies and their socio-economic outcomes.
Affordable housing gap. Demographic challenges. Climate changes. Right to (live in a) city. These
are just some of the issues that should be examined in legal studies, since they shape the actual
substance of expectations, needs, and the direction of desired social policies—and,
consequently, the substance of the right to housing.
- Drawing inspiration from this main objective question, we encourage contributions that address
both general and ground-specific dimensions of housing rights, including but not limited to:
an overview of housing conditions—basic demographic data, the number of people who
are unintentionally homeless, how many residents live in substandard housing, how many
meet the criteria for affordable housing (max. 40% of household income spent on
housing), etc.—can this be categorized, or is a different model needed? - the most significant factors limiting housing accessibility—privatization, deterioration of
housing stock, housing shortages, gentrification ad in consequence treating houses as an
investment asset, - type of housing policy (based on J. Doling’s typology of housing systems (1999): based on
liberal—market-based, socialist system, or mixed systems (as corporate system, when
the housing market is determined by conditions, specified by the state or Asian system, in
which the state handles the organization of financial resources, the provision of land for
construction, while construction and consumption are based on market - whether the policy is implemented centrally (with a predominance of national
instruments such as housing loan policies) or locally (with support from local
governments) and interaction between national frameworks and local practice; - housing policy instruments implemented over the past 20–30 years (e.g., rent subsidies,
low-interest housing loans, expansion of the social housing stock, real estate market
restrictions and regulations, taxes); - effects of these policies: intended and unintended—shortcomings of the instruments,
what was overlooked, what is overregulated; as well as policy failures and so called ‘blind
spots’; - what are the most serious new threats and new ideas emerging in this area within the
country (e.g. financialization and global investment flows, climate change and
displacement, migration and urban pressure, demographic change).
Methodology
We are open to quite a varied range of methodologies – from socio-legal, comparative law to
theoretical and jurisprudential. We welcome empirical and policy-oriented studies and
contributions that demonstrate an interdisciplinary approach, drawing law, sociology, urban
studies and economics.
We invite particularly studies that examines national housing policies . If multiple authors wish to
engage with different aspects of the same jurisdiction, and the contributions are sufficiently
distinct, we are open to including more than one chapter per country. We also encourage multi-
country (as well as potentially multi-authored) chapters exploring one cross-cutting issues.
Important is a clear research question that can enhance our understanding of the constitutional
concept of right to housing in national perspective.
Aforementioned themes are non-exhaustive, and we welcome proposals that engage critically
and creatively with the evolving constitutional, legal and social landscape of right to housing in
state policies and practice.
Each chapter is expected to no more than 40 000 characters with footnotes in the OSCOLA style.
This book aims to advance the debate on whether the right to housing is merely aspirational – or
whether it can function as a meaningful, enforceable legal right in contemporary states. We
cordially invite and encourage to join us in the works on right to housing shaped in reality of
different countries and perspectives. We invite contributions that engage critically, comparatively,
and creatively with this pressing issue.
Submission Guidelines
Abstracts: 300–500 words
Include: research question, methodology, and expected contribution
Chapter length: up to 8 000 words
Referencing style: OSCOLA (Oxford Standard for the Citation of Legal Authorities); citations
should be provided in footnotes
Language: English
Timeline (example – adjust as needed)
Abstract submission deadline: extended to 30 September 2026.
Notification of acceptance: 5 October 2026
Full chapter submission: 30 November 2026
Please send abstracts and inquiries to: a.mlynarska-sobaczewska@inp.pan.pl