Credits: iStock.com

By: Michelle Bruijn 

This submission has been posted as part of a blog series that seeks to profile the newly created NNHRR Working Group on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights blog series, its vision and plans, and to highlight the expertise of its members, showcasing their research and/or contributions to ESCR.

Imagine being forced to leave your home – a place that provides security and a sense of identity – and having to confront the uncertainties of homelessness or dependency on others. This is the harsh reality for thousands of individuals in the Netherlands each year. Evictions – the involuntary removal from one’s home – profoundly disrupt physical and mental well-being, economic stability, and family dynamics. Despite these severe ramifications, eviction remains a common tool wielded by landlords and municipal authorities, raising pressing questions about the protection of human rights, such as the right to housing and the right to property.

In this blog, I introduce the PROHOUSE project, a three-year research project funded by the Dutch NWO Talent Programme (Veni). PROHOUSE aims to assess and explain the extent to which Dutch courts protect citizens from eviction and the impact the rights to housing and property have on judicial decision-making in Dutch eviction litigation. 

Evictions in the Netherlands and gaps in existing research

In 2023 alone, Dutch courts issued over 8,700 eviction orders, often due to issues such as rent arrears, noise complaints, or planned property demolitions. Additionally, municipalities close more than 1,000 homes annually, evicting both tenants and homeowners for public safety reasons. These closures often stem from drug-related offences, violent incidents, or severe neglect of property maintenance.

From a human rights perspective, eviction constitutes one of the most severe interferences with the right to housing. Protected under multiple international instruments, this right emphasises security of tenure and mandates that individuals facing eviction have the opportunity to challenge its proportionality and reasonableness in court. Consequently, many international and Dutch housing law research analyses the protection national courts offer against eviction.

However, these studies often only focus on the role of the right to housing, overlooking the equally important right to property. Moreover, existing research predominantly focuses on private law evictions of tenants, disregarding administrative law evictions by local governments and evictions of other occupiers (e.g., homeowners and squatters). This oversight creates a distorted narrative, leaving a gap in understanding how courts adjudicate eviction cases and how these frequent evictions align with international human rights law. PROHOUSE aims to fill this gap by investigating both private law and administrative law evictions, tenant and non-tenant relationships, and the role of both the rights to housing and property.

Housing and Property Rights

In the context of eviction, housing and property rights are often perceived as competing. For instance, when landlords’ property rights clash with tenants’ housing rights. Both international and Dutch property law demand that courts give considerable weight to ownership, but the international right to housing demands strong protection of the power- and property-less and requires national courts to consider the personal circumstances of those at risk of eviction, such as health status, age and risk of homelessness. National courts have the complex task of weighing these competing rights and interests to determine whether an eviction is fair.

However, housing and property rights could also act as allies. For example, a homeowner (owner-occupier) who is evicted by a local government is protected by both the right to housing and the right to property. National courts should then weigh the housing and property rights against the public interest. Existing scholarship often overlooks this protective function of property rights. This oversight hinders understanding the impact of the right to housing, given its interdependence with the right to property as both competitor and ally.

By investigating both private law and administrative law evictions and the role of both housing and property rights, PROHOUSE will ultimately provide a comprehensive understanding of how courts adjudicate these complex cases.

Introducing PROHOUSE 

The PROHOUSE project aims to assess and explain the extent to which Dutch courts protect citizens from eviction and the impact the rights to housing and property have on judicial decision-making in Dutch eviction litigation. To achieve this goal, PROHOUSE combines traditional legal research with machine learning across four subprojects.

Project 1: Delineate the rights to housing and property 
Project 1 conducts a doctrinal legal analysis to determine the scope and interpretation of the international rights to housing and property in the context of evictions. This involves analysing treaties, case law, and interpretive statements of the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, the Committee on the Rights of the Child, the European Court of Human Rights, the European Committee of Social Rights, and the Court of Justice of the European Union. 

Projects 2 and 3: Automated identification and analysis of eviction cases
Projects 2 and 3 utilise Machine Learning to identify and explain the factors that influence judicial decision-making in Dutch eviction cases. Project 2 focuses on private law evictions and Project 3 on administrative law evictions. First, these projects will automate the identification of all eviction judgments published by the Dutch Judiciary. Second, all relevant information from the cases will be automatically extracted using machine annotation. Third, the statistical relationship between these annotated information and the case outcome will be determined to identify which factors are ‘predictors’ for the case outcome. Finally, the identified predictors are examined to determine whether and how they align with the rights to housing and property.

Project 4: Develop Phria
Project 4 develops a tool named Phria (Property and Housing Rights Interference Alert) to assist stakeholders (e.g., evictees and property owners) in understanding eviction judgments and the role of housing and property rights. Phria will be an interactive platform that allows users to explore the probable impact of selected case factors on an eviction judgment. Evictees can use Phria to assess their options in an eviction dispute, while landlords and local governments will be able to gauge the strength of their case.

By combining traditional legal analysis with machine learning techniques, PROHOUSE will significantly advance our understanding of how housing and property rights affect judicial decision-making in eviction cases. Moreover, this innovative and comprehensive approach will contribute to advancing the broader discourses on housing law and human rights compliance.  

Stay Engaged

Over the next three years, PROHOUSE will delve deep into the intersection of housing law, human rights and machine learning. Updates, findings, and resources will be shared on prohouseproject.org.

Bio:

Dr. Michelle Bruijn is an Associate Professor at the Department of Legal Methods at the Faculty of Law, University of Groningen. Her main fields of research are public order, safety, and health, with a particular focus on the regulation of cannabis and tobacco, the fight against drug-related (organised) crime, drug-related evictions, and the protection of the right to housing. She is fascinated by the interaction between different areas of law (e.g., private, criminal, and administrative law). She combines traditional doctrinal legal research with (quantitative) empirical methods and data science techniques to study these interactions.