Reconceptualizing the right to housing from a personal and neighborhood perspective

Public housing systems are under pressure due to the limited offer,
declining social cohesion and increasing shifts towards private
provision and middle-income target groups. In response to a
permanent housing crisis and declining public housing systems, civil
society, activist groups and housing movements are setting up new
housing initiatives. We are interested to understand how the right to
housing is guaranteed or reclaimed in the new bottom-up initiatives
and in the public housing strategies that aim to provide affordable
housing solutions. In deprived or low-income neighborhoods the
spatial expression of the housing crisis becomes apparent in
substandard housing conditions, affordable housing shortage and
processes of social exclusion and gentrification. On the personal
level, poor and insecure housing conditions produce residential
alienation. Based on a mapping of affordable housing solutions and
in-depth interviews with residents of these new initiatives and public
housing projects in two neighborhoods in Brussels and Antwerp, we
aim to contribute to a new theoretical understanding of the right to
housing. By reconceptualizing the right to housing from a personal
and neighborhood perspective, we contribute to a better
understanding of the legitimacy of affordable housing solutions,
whether they are public or bottom-up initiatives or combinations of
both.