A Tale of Two Rights: The Right to the City and A Right

to Adequate Housing

Margot Young, LAW, UBCPHRN Symposium November 19, 2014

The Just City

“pacification by cappuccino” Sharon Zukin, 1995

NEOLIBERALISMAND THE CITY

“…neoliberal governance works through the hegemonic model of growth politics…commercialization of public space, the intensification of surveillance and policing of urban space, the entrepreneurial ways in which cities market themselves in global competition and the concomitant neglect of neighbourhoods falling by the wayside.” Margit Mayer, 2010

“…another type of human rights, that of the right to the city.”David Harvey 2008

…the right of everyone to an

adequate standard of living … including adequate food, clothing and housing…. The States Parties will take appropriate steps to ensure the realization of this right...

United Nations Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, Article 11(1)

“horizons of possibilities” Werbner and Yuval-Davis, 1999

“…another type of human rights, that of the right to the city.”David Harvey 2008

-surge in attention to participation in the production of the spaces of the city

Henri Lefebrve 1968: “it’s like a cry and a demand.” Participation and Appropriation.

The call “to radically rethink the social relations of capitalism, the spatial structure of the city and the assumptions of liberal democracy.” Mark Purcell, 2008

Conflictual, agonistic interactions

Struggles around homelessness and new housing in Vancouver

• Oppenheimer Park• Oakridge• Kettle of Fish• Dunbar

– and so on…guerrillagardening, squats, safeinjection sites

INHABIT VANCOUVER

Catalyst for a wide variety of movements, policy, thought but…

• A difficult and open idea

• Whose city?

• More reformist contexts and contents…conflation to liberal notions of multiple socio-economic rights…not about a transformed and very different just society

…the right to adequate housing

• Court File No. CV-10-403688• Ontario• Superior Court of Justice

• B E T W E E N :

• JENNIFER TANUDJAJA, JANICE ARSENAULT, ANSAR MAHMOOD, • BRIAN DUBOURDIEU, CENTRE FOR EQUALITY RIGHTS IN • ACCOMMODATION

• Applicants

• -and-

• ATTORNEY GENERAL OF CANADA and• ATTORNEY GENERAL OF ONTARIO

• Respondents

• APPLICATION UNDER Rule 14.05(3)(g.1) of the Rules of Civil Procedure, R.R.O. 1990, O Reg. 194 and under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms

• MOTION RECORD• (of the proposed intervener, Charter Committee on Poverty Issues, Pivot Legal Society, the

Income Security Advocacy Centre and Justice for Girls)

Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms:Section 7 right to life, liberty and security of the person;Section 15 right to equality

• Law “reflects a dynamic relationship between

spatial forms and social discourses with corresponding productions of control, authority, and power.” Melinda Benson, 2014

• Law’s capacity to form and reform the material world.

• Individual or group based?• Liberal legalism

Rights and remedial options

These two ways of capturing the injustices of Canadian urban life and relations have both emerged as key discourses in the struggle for inclusive and just cities. Together, the two politics offer provocative tensions around issues of individual and collective action, legal and political avenues, universality and particularity, and expansion and containment.

With the downsizing, downloading, and downscaling typical of neoliberalism in full bloom across Canada, we can expect to see prominent social justice issues emerging from the streets, lanes, parks, and structures of Canadian cities.

We need to think about rights and justice as often deeply located in local politics and as requiring a re-production of spaces, of civic geography.