Addressing poverty at its base: the housing and land rights approach

Miloon Kothari

Chapter 17 in Research Handbook on Human Rights and Poverty, 2026, pp 296-311 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: Studies on poverty have largely focused on the economic dimensions of poverty. The housing, health, food, environmental, and security reality of the poor are seldom a focus of attention. Studies on income disparity and inequality, similarly, have rarely focused on where the poor live and whether the disparity of income is also a reflection of the space and place (the location) where people and communities dwell. The chapter argues that the morphological approach would lend a different but critical dimension to the study of poverty: why apartheid cities, for example, are being created across the world. The chapter explores, through case studies, how a housing and land rights approach can provide greater specificity and context that assists in better targeted interventions in the spaces where the marginalised live. The chapter argues that a spatial justice approach that is cross-disciplinary and multi-dimensional is necessary – going well beyond a purely legal and economistic approach. The chapter calls for research that utilises the spatial justice approach to better understand the causes of and prevalence of poverty. Analysis based on the methodologies discussed in the chapter can provide solutions to the growing phenomenon of discrimination and ghettoisation in cities, towns and villages across the world.

Keywords: Morphological; Spatial justice; Housing rights; Land rights; Discrimination; Evictions (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
ISBN: 9781035350506
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