Ms Leilani Farha, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Housing, says developers and governments should be blamed for making housing unaffordable for the people
Farha, in her latest report presented on Thursday to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, said financial speculation had led to unsustainable global housing crisis.
“The financial world has essentially operated without any consideration of housing as a human right and states are complicit.
“They (states) have supported financial markets in a way that has made housing unaffordable for most residents,” Farha said.
The UN rights expert regretted that the world’s money markets had priced people out of cities, blaming financial markets and speculators for treating housing as a “place to park capital”.
“Housing has lost its social function and is seen instead as a vehicle for wealth and asset growth.
“It has become a financial commodity, robbed of its connection to community, dignity and the idea of home,” she said.
The report examined how housing had become a repository for global capital, and the impact that commodification had had on affordability of housing and homelessness.
The total value of the global housing market is a staggering 163 trillion dollars, the equivalent of more than twice the world’s total economy, the UN expert said.
Her report recommended stronger rights-based frameworks both domestically and internationally to address the problem.
The report also suggested that states must regulate private actors not simply to prevent blatant violations of human rights but also to ensure that their actions are consistent with the obligation to realise housing as a human right for all.
“In London, for instance, developers have not been scared off by the social housing requirement, while in Vancouver, vacant homes face a one per cent tax levy which is intended to contribute to low-income accommodation.
“This is an issue of accountability.
“Government accountability to international human rights obligations has been replaced with accountability to markets and investors,” Farha said. (NAN)
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