Date: 21/04/2023

Country: Ireland

Jurisdiction: National, Irish High Court

Subject:

The Irish High Court last week held that the State failed to provide material reception conditions such as shelter, food and hygiene facilities. The boy was under 18 years old when he came to Ireland but he had no documentation and was refused accommodation.

Background

The Right to housing is guaranteed in the Spanish constitution (1978). Article 47 provides that one of the “guiding principles of social and economic policy” is the right of Spanish citizens to decent and adequate housing. These "guiding principles” do not receive the strong jurisdictional protection enshrined in the Constitution for "fundamental rights".

UN experts, the Special Rapporteur on the right to adequate housing, Balakrishnan Rajagopal, and the Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, Olivier de Schutter, have issued a Call for input on criminalisation of homelessness and extreme poverty.

On June 4th HRW organised a legal workshop about combatting unfit housing and slum landlords in the EU. The workshop feeds into a study on this topic that will be published soon. Here you can access a summary of the study. Below you can find the video of the session and the presentation of the speakers.

In Italy there is no provision in the constitutional dictum that enshrines the right to housing as a social right expressly recognized. Constitutional jurisprudence began to outline the contours of this right in the early 1980s, but always placed it in a position serving for the affirmation of other rights related to it.

The unwritten constitution of the UK does not protect the right to housing. However, the UK enjoys enforceable entitlements that are relatively more robust than those in other countries. At the same time, underfunded local councils, rising wealth inequalities and significant cuts to the social security regime are contributing to an unprecedented housing crisis.

England

Monitoring group of civil society organisations regret Spain’s response to UN views and recommendations on the failure to provide alternative housing to a family evicted from its home

FEANTSA together with several Spanish organisations denounce the inadequate and insufficient response of the Spanish government to the recommendations issued by the UN Committee of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, which condemned Spain for violating the right to housing in the case of a family with young children (one and three-year-old).