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Assisting poor and marginalised groups to realise an adequate standard of living
Developing housing rights and basic services jurisprudence.
Ensuring pro-poor legal and policy frameworks and developing socio-economic rights jurisprudence
Ensuring pro-poor legal and policy frameworks and developing socio-economic rights jurisprudence

Housing and Evictions

Of all socio-economic rights, the right of access to adequate housing has been the most developed through Constitutional Court cases, many of which have been actively participated in by SERI’s co-founders. This means that there is a body of work to use as a basis of advocacy and litigation.

However, while jurisprudence has established, for example, that poor people should not be evicted without the government providing adequate alternative accommodation, a number of crucial gaps remain. One of these is that there is insufficient research on the nature and attributes of alternative accommodation required by people under threat of eviction. Another is the need to combat state efforts to exclude classes of people from the provision of alternative accommodation as a means of narrowing the scope of their obligations to provide housing. Yet another is the lack of a co-ordinated civil society sector response to deficiencies in the implementation of housing policies. Agendas remain to be developed, and community-based organisations do not receive the necessary expert assistance from lawyers and policy specialists to properly develop and implement the agendas that they have identified without assistance. Too many community-based organisations (CBOs) lack the resources necessary to resist forced evictions and engage critically with pre-determined upgrading and relocation plans, which are often presented to them as faits-accomplis.

There is a pressing need to assist informal occupiers (and the organisations that represent them) to participate in and influence upgrading projects in a way that minimises resultant displacement and eliminates consequential homelessness. Equally important is to provide poor people under threat of eviction with the legal tools necessary to compel the state to provide alternative accommodation where an eviction would otherwise lead to homelessness, or to raise a defence which would forestall a removal in the first place.

SERI aims to contribute to the realisation of the right to housing in South Africa through defending removals (protecting housing-related rights from negative violations). It also aims to develop the law through research and public interest litigation regarding adequate housing alternatives (promoting housing-related rights). Finally, through advocacy, rights-based knowledge transfer and forging continuous relationships with communities, SERI hopes to advance the process of securing long-term housing for vulnerable groups (fulfilment of the right to housing). Regarding the latter objective, SERI will coordinate with Abahlali baseMjondolo (AbM), Informal Settlement Network (ISN), the Legal Resources Centre (LRC), Church Land Programme (CLP), Planact and other CBOs and NGOs working in the sector so as not to better coordinate efforts to prevent or ameliorate the effects of forced evictions, as well as to forge new and constructive forms of engagement on the right to housing.

List of housing/evictions-related legislation and policy here.

Relevant SERI research

  • Resource guide: "A Resource Guide to Housing in South Africa 1994-2010: Legislation, Policy, Programmes and Practice" (February 2011) here.
  • Working paper: "Towards a Synthesis of the Political, Social and Technical in Informal Settlement Upgrading in South Africa: A Case Study of Slovo Park Informal Settlement, Johannesburg" (April 2011) here.
  • Academic articles: List of housing- and eviction-related publications by SERI staff members here.

Relevant SERI cases