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The purpose of this paper is to assess the implementation of the minimum level of protection against the loss of the home that arises from Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights in The Netherlands. The paper focuses on anti-social behaviour-related cases in which the landlord requests the court to issue an eviction order.

The paper is based on a statistical analysis of nearly 250 judgements concerning housing-related anti-social behaviour.

A significant difference is found in the court’s attitude against drug-related anti-social behaviour and other types of nuisance. Moreover, it is found that in two-thirds of the cases, the tenant advanced a proportionality defence. Although the European Court stresses the need of a proportionality check, the Dutch courts ignore the tenant’s proportionality defence in 10 per cent of the cases and issue an eviction order in the majority of all cases. Advancing a proportionality defence does not result in any difference for the court decision.

The paper presents original data on the legal protection against eviction in cases concerning anti-social behaviour. This is the first study that analyses the approach towards housing-related anti-social behaviour in the context of the European minimum level of protection. Whilst centred on legislation and procedures in The Netherlands, its findings and discussion are relevant in other jurisdictions facing similar issues.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the lessee eviction process in Zimbabwe in order to suggest possible ways of improving this process that has become a rutted road characterised by a litany of hiccups.

The study is guided by the qualitative methodology. Data were mainly collected from property managers operating in the real property market in Harare using in-depth interviews. Analysis of data was done through content analysis.

It emerged from the study that the eviction process in Zimbabwe is fraught with impediments and expenses that are sometimes exasperating to property owners and investors. The current eviction regulations favour the lessees at the expense of lessors thus niggling lessees have aggravated the already protracted process by unnecessary appeals.

The paper only focuses on residential property management and eviction of legal lessees due to non-payment of rentals.

The rent regulations should be reviewed in order to create a fair legal system that protects the rights of both the lessors and lessees in Zimbabwe.

The perpetual decline of the economy in Zimbabwe has crippled lessees’ ability to pay rentals. Yet, it has also become intricate to evict defaulting lessees thereby causing loss of income to rental housing investors. Thus, the paper challenges the protracted eviction processes in the real property industry that have prejudiced property owners and scared away potential rental housing investors that are greatly needed to boost the rental market.

The purpose of this paper is to show the different attitudes to bank ownership and regulation, residential lending and eviction in the UK and France, with their effects in the credit crunch and how these factors are connected. UK non‐interventionism stems from a history of private banking, where competition produced plentiful finance but high risks for borrowers, where eviction is certain and fairly quick, but not necessarily disastrous for borrowers within a flexible system. The French history of post‐war interventionism for reconstruction and cautious banking has had successes and failures, culminating in large‐scale special loans to lower‐income borrowers, improving lending liquidity and stability. The French lower lending levels, intervention and caution can be partly explained by the disastrous effects of French debt and eviction processes on borrowers, but with overlay of delay and social protection.

The paper uses a historical institutionalist approach, calling on historical materials, statistics (where available) and the law and procedure of banking, mortgages, eviction and insolvency. Quantitative comparison of mortgage evictions is difficult, but procedures illuminate this.

National approaches to banking are path dependent and this effect is underestimated, particularly concerning attitudes to public intervention and eviction. Awareness of these connected effects could improve comparative research to assist lending to lower income groups, particularly concerning special French loans.

This can improve open‐mindedness, and promote ideas to house young people rather than simply calling for heavy regulation in the UK, or criticising French interventionism.

Comparative evictions related to the history of banking intervention are considerably understudied. The paper addresses the issues.

Slums, in urban areas of the Global South, are often manifested as the spatial manifestation of urban poverty. In many local contexts, eviction of slums is treated as the recipe of urban development initiative, which is actually wrong and short-sighted unsustainable solution. This chapter addresses some of the interlinked issues and highlights how the megacities of the Global South can pursue a more holistic, pro-poor, and sustainable solutions by dealing this developmental challenge.

This chapter is basically an outcome of a policy research, combining information and arguments from different secondary resources.

This chapter offers a better understanding on the causes and consequences of the slums, along with ideas for the government to tackle this issue and promote better livelihoods for the poor citizens. Even though this chapter focuses on the sustainability challenges in Dhaka, it can have policy implications in other regions with similar social, economic, and political conditions.

The discussion in this chapter does not include an empirical modeling or analysis technique so that the problems can be proven quantitatively. In some future research, a more quantitative approach can help to quantify the losses people are facing in terms of social value, monetary losses, and environmental cohesion.

Without making any provisions for jobs and livelihoods for the poor slum dwellers, the process of eviction might cause the total “city management” system to collapse. Then it is no more an urban development initiative, but rather a government-initiated poverty generation process. Therefore, government can think for solutions at different levels – from local to regional scale, including long-term and short-term sustainability strategies.

Often the governments as well as the policy makers in the Global South treat the poverty problems (including slum formations) from a much narrower perspective. They should rather focus on the issue as part of a big developmental picture. The strategies can start both from macro- and micro-levels. On the macro-level, the government can initiate climate-resilient and pro-poor development strategies. On the micro-level, the government, along with nongovernmental organizations and national and international development partners, can focus on skill development opportunities and policies, so that the poor can live legally, wherever they want, with decent employment and livelihood opportunities.

Forced eviction is a topic of growing importance globally, and the purpose of this article is to investigate a much‐publicised recent case involving Gypsies and Travellers in the United Kingdom (not usually a country associated with such actions).

After setting the context of planning enforcement law in the UK, Green Belt and other planning policies, and the status of Gypsies/Travellers as a disadvantaged minority group, the paper traces the history of the Dale Farm eviction over a 25‐year period and analyses the legal arguments put to the High Court in unsuccessful attempts to defer and over‐turn the eviction, against the context of internationally agreed guidelines.

The research found that the judiciary gave full consideration to all aspects, in accordance with ECHR case law, and upheld the Green Belt and planning objections. The UK government was determined to proceed, resisting various offers of mediation, and the site was cleared even though no appropriate alternative accommodation was available, and notwithstanding that the occupiers owned their own plots.

The case is a new development in a long‐running history of forced eviction of Gypsies by local authorities, and is of interest in comparative study of treatment of Gypsies in other European countries, particularly in the context of the recent European Union Roma Inclusion Strategy.

This study aims to examine how temporary relocation areas (TRAs), urban forms that facilitate evictions and forced relocations, have been written into South African legal and governmental structures through contested urban planning and legal regimes.

Proceeding from the macro-scale of TRAs spread across the nation, to the mezzo-scale of the Delft Symphony Way TRA in Cape Town, to the micro-scale of an individual “blikkie” (housing unit) within this camp, the article looks at the form and function of the TRA in urban resettlement practices. Special attention is given to relocation areas’ designation as “temporary” spaces and the consequences of this temporal designation in law and on the ground.

These sites have developed as technologies for negotiating competing demands on the state, and their presence foregrounds some of the deeply rooted contradictions in post-apartheid South Africa. They are places both within and apart from the city, often managed by city officials according to municipal specifications, but located proximally to key urban amenities, utilities services and employment centers. They also place contradictory demands on their residents, for whom making the TRA liveable also legitimates it as a form of housing.

This article uncovers several concerns about TRAs, including their inadequacy for long-term settlement, their problematic usage as tools of dispossession and the spatial-material-legal imbrications by which TRAs exist, persist and act back upon both individual lives and policy spheres.

This study examines the way the government of Kazakhstan confronted informal (squatter) settlements and their property in Almaty in 2006. It argues that the way the state handled the issue as part of a broader state economic strategy was neither appropriate for the aim of creating a functioning property market nor for advancing social justice and welfare. The analysis focuses on the attempted demolition of two informal settlements, Bakay and Shanyrak, and subsequent events, including (a) militant and political responses among the residents and their supporters, (b) the legalization campaign, and (c) the effects of the global credit crunch on construction and property market in Almaty. The goal here is to refine the claim to a connection between formal economy, state practice, and squatters' experiences.

In the aftermath of the Great Recession, over 500,000 families have been evicted from their homes since Spain’s property market crashed in 2008. The response of Spanish local communities has been the emergence of a networked social movement, Plataforma de Afectados por la Hipoteca (PAH), endeavouring to build a more sustainable future through upholding the right to housing. This chapter examines the ability of the PAH social movement to uphold the right to housing and prompt social and institutional change in Spain.

This is a single-case study of the PAH social movement in Spain. The data are of three types: texts, photos, and films disseminated via the mass media, social networks, and PAH websites; informal conversations with PAH participants from Barcelona and Madrid; and observations and personal interviews held in two local PAH groups, that is, Móstoles and Elche.

In this chapter, first we explore the birth of PAH and its later spread from Barcelona to hundreds of cities in Spain and beyond, as a social reaction to the economic recession and decisions made by political, administrative, and financial institutions in response to the economic crisis. Then, by analysing the internal dynamics of two PAH groups, we discuss how networked social movements such as PAH can create spaces of citizenship that challenge taken-for-granted principles of capitalism, prompting social change. Finally, we uncover how, due to PAH’s advocacy work addressing a structural lack of emergency and social housing, the Spanish public administration is developing new roles and allocating new resources to guarantee the right to housing, a social policy area historically neglected in Spain.

New social housing offices are being established in municipalities in Spain as a result of PAH’s advocacy work.

The strengthening of social capital and movements in the aftermath of the economic crisis has the ability to prompt investment in social areas such as housing.