Right to housing or right to property? Between proprietary individualism and housing as a collective achievement

Abstract

This monograph analyses the housing crisis through an iterative dialogue between the epistemological and methodological frameworks of social anthropology and law, with the objective of moving beyond the predominantly economic approaches that shaped much of the research on residential issues. In the Spanish context, marked by a limited stock of social housing, a culture of home ownership and the consolidation of a rentier capitalist model, the contributions brought together here examine the social, legal and political dimensions of access to housing. This broadening of focus, together with the interdisciplinary approach at the heart of this initiative, enables the articulation of transformative proposals and even envisaging of solutions to the housing issue through popular demands and legislative changes, the scope of which is also analysed by the authors. Ultimately, the aim is to analyse this complexity by providing insights that enable progress towards the realisation of the right to housing, which is currently being systematically violated, and which can hardly be promoted without first overcoming reductionist views of both the right to housing, often confined to its social-assistance dimension, and the right to property, rooted in individualistic conceptions of merit and legitimacy.