Housing rights in Argentina

Housing rights in Argentina

Inhabiting a worthy house helps to guarantee other human rights. Adequate housing should have access to safe drinking water, energy for cooking, heating and lighting, sanitation and washing facilities, site drainage and emergency services; adequate housing should provide enough and adequate space for a comfortable life and protection from cold, heat, rain, wind, dust or other risks to health. Adequate housing must also be in a location which allows access to employment options, health-care services, educational centres and other social facilities. Living in a place with those features facilitates the satisfaction of other rights: health, privacy, rest, education, work.

The Argentine republic has a Constitution which contains two articles related to housing rights.

There is an article incorporated in 1957 (14 bis) which mentions explicitly, among other issues, the right to a house: “In particular, the laws shall establish:... access to a worthy house.”

In 1994 a series of international human rights treaties were incorporated to the Constitution (article 75, paragraph 22) obliging the nation to comply with these new commitments. Several of those treaties contain points about housing but the more relevant and extensive instrument related to this topic is the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) that establish the content of the right to adequate housing and how the State should proceed in relation to forced evictions. The ICESCR says that:

An adequate house must have:

• Legal security of tenure
• Availability of services, materials, facilities and infrastructure
• Affordability of the household costs
• Habitability
• Accessibility to those entitled to it
• Location which allows access to employment options, health-care services, schools and other social facilities.
• Cultural adequacy

Legislation about forced evictions should contain measures which:

• Provide the maximum security of tenure to occupiers
• Are adjusted to the ICESCR
• Regulate strictly how forced evictions must be carried out

The articles and the treaties mentioned should guarantee the housing rights in Argentina. However, in spite of the existence of those legal instruments a large part of the population is still having housing problems, huge difficulties to have access to a place to live in and is exposed to forced evictions, done by the same state that should protect them. Those legal instruments also require the State to invest the maximum available resources to meet the housing goals.

Observing the present habitational situation and knowing the contents of the current legislation there is a contradiction that poses some questions related to this topic.

• Who, having the possibility, does not comply with the norms?
• Is it possible to solve housing problems only with the legal framework?
• What other actions could be made to improve the habitational situation?

• Housing cooperatives