Clarifying the right to housing would strengthen households’ position on the housing market

The public sector has a responsibility to secure the right to housing, according to the Swedish constitution. However, there is no absolute right for an individual citizen to claim a home. The right to housing is more of a “social right,” meaning a responsibility for the state to create favourable conditions for people’s housing. Here, housing differs from other rights such as healthcare and education.

“It is not reasonable to have a system where everyone is assigned a home, much like school placements. In Sweden, the right to housing is instead a programmatic right, as opposed to a legally enforceable right. It is a political commitment for the state to organise citizens’ housing provision,” says Bo Bengtsson, Professor Emeritus in Political Science at IBF.

This happens through what Bengtsson calls “correctives” to the housing market, designed to make market outcomes socially and politically acceptable. Such correctives can include financial support and subsidies, but also regulations on tenure forms and rent-setting, or particular organisations such as publicly owned housing companies.

The book discusses five institutional pillars underpinning the programmatic right to housing: (1) a general policy without individual needs assessment; (2) municipalities’ and public housing companies’ responsibility for implementation; (3) an integrated rental market where private and public rental housing compete on equal terms; (4) neutrality between tenure forms; (5) a collective system for rent negotiations.

Much has changed on the housing market since the 1970s, when Ingvar Carlsson was Sweden’s first Minister for Housing and the constitutional texts on the right to housing were adopted. Despite the constitutionally protected right to housing, many today lack a good and secure home. This applies not only to adults but also to children.

“Today, many politicians and researchers talk about housing as if it were just any commodity, without regard for the social and psychological aspects of housing. But housing and neighbourhoods play a huge role in people’s lives. There is an unequal relationship between landlord and tenant because the landlord has no comparable social or psychological connection to the ‘commodity’,” explains Bo Bengtsson.

He and other researchers have noted that social and economic problems on the housing market have worsened in recent years, and it is clear that these problems have been exacerbated by the erosion of the generally oriented housing policy regime.

“The programmatic right to housing enshrined in the constitution is now insufficient to deal with problems such as housing shortages, weakened security of tenure, and growing homelessness,” says Bo Bengtsson.

A major problem, he argues, is the absence of an official authority responsible for ensuring citizens’ right to housing. At the same time, he is sceptical about introducing social housing, which Sweden has not had since the 1940s, and which he believes would lead to a complete systemic shift.

Bo Bengtsson prefers to propose a middle way whereby the current general housing regime remains, but with clearer responsibilities for implementation placed on the state and municipalities. This could be supplemented with certain formally enforceable rights.

“More enforceable regulations would, among other things, give households with housing problems—who currently fall between the cracks—a stronger position vis-à-vis social services. It is not an easy path to take, but it would be a socially more sustainable solution than entirely discarding today’s general housing system and introducing market rents and social housing.”