









































Vittorio De Sicca’s Il Tetto (1956), an artful 
cinematographic exercise in neo-realist style, centers 
on one couple’s quest to find a home in post-war 
Rome. The second half of the film sees penniless 
Luisa and Natale plan the completion of a house 
of sorts. The city regulations allow people to secure 
their right to a parcel of land and a small building 
if they manage to construct the latter without being 
stopped by the authorities. The completion of the 
house is to be secretive and realized overnight—
the title of the movie refers to one of the features 
required for the building to be legally considered 
as completed, and thus occupiable: four walls, a 
door, and a tetto¸ a roof. At dawn, policemen find 
the newly erected shack, Luisa and Natale anxiously 
hiding within. The agents inspect it, walking 
around its perimeter. They palpate its block walls in 
a methodic way. They knock vigorously on the door, 
which they then try to open, without success—it is 
sturdily hinged and fastened. I won’t spoil the film’s 
ending, suffice it to highlight a simple intuition 
here at play: in the eyes of the law and in the eyes 
of the audience, these four walls, door, and roof are 
the necessary features of a house. We recognize the 
space of the house bounded within these closed, 
basic elements. We recognize it as the space of the 
private, where inhabitants’ bodies are “sheltered” 
and safe. This characterization is time and again 
set in opposition (or patent complementarity) 
with the space of the public. Built public spaces 
evoke imaginaries of collectivity and seamlessness; 
of civicism and openness. Built private spaces 
evoke imaginaries of control and identifiable 
boundaries,  of refuge, individuality and sustenance.1 

Property, Necessity and Housing. 
Reconsidering the Situated Right 
to a Place to Be

Erika Brandl



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I have detailed Il Tetto’s dwelling as fastened, closed and in many ways, 
impenetrable. One ought not to penetrate this little portion of city space, 
as it is now walled off and occupied. Regardless of nearby activities, events, 
gatherings, infrastructures—that which lies behind these walls is not to be 
touched. 

This filmic set-up hints at an established legal and sociocultural 
principle. There exists an architectural inside and outside. Both inside and 
outside spaces operate according to a given set of rules. Luisa and Natale’s 
shack represents the paradigmatic inside space of the home. As such, we 
attribute to it the sacredness of private property. “That which lies behind 
these walls is not to be touched”—in most cultures, the claim is gospel.2  
The walls’ outside can be declined in many degrees of publicness, and thus 
operate according to varying rules and laws. Yet, as I will demonstrate in 
this article, the architecture of private property, with a marked focus on the 
architecture of dwellings, arises as existentially significant because of the 
functions which it enables and protects. Commonplace definitions of what 
constitutes a good “dwelling” or “house” allude to human necessity, but 
ultimately fall short of providing us with true housing adequacy. This, I 
posit, is because they limit their scope to physical features (walls, windows, 
floors, doors, roofs) and their delimitation of a private inside, opposed to a 
public outside. They do so, however, without clarifying those very essential 
human functions. To be sure, housing architectures are constituted of 
basic, physical elements; they allow for a form of domestic life which can 

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hardly take place in streets, parks and urban squares. 
Why is this the case? Why must something be done 
inside and not outside the house? In this article, 
I return to the seminal works of Jeremy Waldron 
and Richard Epstein in order to clarify what is at 
stake with the principles of adequacy and property 
which oversee one’s life in dwelling. I comment 
on the functions of publicly and privately built 
infrastructures, considering notions of individual 
freedom and flourishing. “Why must something 
be done inside and not outside the house?” is 
another way of asking “Why are dwellings so 
necessary to us?”—returning to this straightforward 
interrogation, and examining it in light of a rights-
based tradition of political philosophy, allows 
for an improved understanding of contemporary 
architectural challenges. In the concluding part of 
my examination, I make use of different scenarios 
to highlight the tension following from stringent 
boundaries in societies where individuals’ right to 
adequate dwelling is not fulfilled. In particular, I 
recuperate Alejandra Mancilla’s cosmopolitanist 
reasoning on the old right of necessity and apply 
it explicitly to urban situations, where public and 
private boundaries order the sustenance of human 
life. This leads to new considerations on the 
policing of urban spaces, and on the duties of states 
in ensuring the fulfillment of the right to adequate 
dwelling (or right to housing).

Before I start this investigation, I need to clarify 
the important difference between the “right to 
housing” and “housing rights.” The former term 
refers to a moral right. It is a justificatory argument, 
a condition which relates to licit individual 
interests, and which is informed by sociocultural 
norms or standards. The latter term refers to a legal 
right, to conditions granted by statutes. Housing 
rights are concerned with statutory features, or law 
entitlements, such as those on which Luisa and 
Natale depended. In other words, housing rights 
will describe what provisions might be (content 



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definition, legality), but not why they ought to be (content justification, 
morality). This article focusses on the normative framework, examining 
implications and features of a right to adequate dwelling infrastructures, 
and exploring the question on what grounds such a right performs. Or 
simply put, why it exists, and what should be its content in terms of legal 
protections and provisions. The same conceptual logic applies to the canon 
“right to the city”, which links back to moral and justificatory arguments. 
Finally, while the term “housing” evokes a formal specificity that the term 
“dwelling” fittingly avoids, I use both words interchangeably. Political and 
activist cultures which mobilize around this issue have, for the most part, 
adopted the expression “right to housing.” So, I maintain a connection 
with these cultures by recuperating it literally in my text. 

On individuals’ situated freedom to be 
I first turn to legal philosopher Jeremy Waldron. His ‘Homelessness 

and the Issue of Freedom’ (1991) remains to this day one of the most 
rigorous and spirited philosophical studies of the issue of housing. This 
account has led prominent scholars to revise their libertarian position on 
the existence of a human right to an adequate dwelling.3 As the text deals 
with the nature of vagrancy and public and private ownership, it reveals 
the complexity of the occupation of space in cities, as well as the impact 
of housing inadequacy on human dignity, welfare and liberty. Jeremy 
Waldron begins by reminding the reader of the importance to revise the 
liberal discourse surrounding an (ever more limited) individual right to be 
in a place. In a manner which echoes that of famed philosophers of welfare 
rights, he expresses his frustrations at the lofty-sounding but ultimately 
inconsistent commitments of liberal theorists, which are here accused of 
glossing over the questions raised by the absence or the gross inadequacy 
of housing, and in particular by homelessness. These questions relate to the 
“most basic principles of liberty”, and so ought to preoccupy us every bit 
as much as more familiar worries about torture, the suppression of dissent, 
and other violations of human rights.4 Waldron proceeds to detail people’s 
situated nature, which brings him to call for a complete requalification 
of what is understood as dignified—adequate—occupations of spaces, be 
they private or public. What, then, is implied by people’s situated nature? 
In brief, all actions must be situated. This follows from the simple fact that 
“everything that is done has to be done somewhere.”5 As embodied beings, 
we are always located. We are not free to perform an act unless there is 
some place we are free to perform it in. Such statements are banal, but 
to Waldron they hint at the possibility of speaking of housing as one of 
the most significant goods, if not “the most significant.”6 Or, to rephrase 



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this in the evocative language of capability, they 
hint at the possibility of speaking of housing as one 
of the most significant enablers of essential human 
functions. 

Rights are interrelated and interdependent. 
The right to a safe, situated place corresponds to 
the freedom of exercise of all other rights. The idea 
at play for Waldron is that an individual who has 
no site of dwelling is completely and at all times 
at the mercy of others. Crucially, and I will return 
to this idea, there is no place governed by private 
property rules or increasingly stringent public 
property rules where she is allowed to be and do 
at will. She cannot make use of her most basic 
functionings as she basically has no right to be 
anywhere. If our conceptions of human freedom, 
welfare or autonomy are to relate to a person’s most 
vital interests and functions, we can see how the 
situated nature of individuals points at the special 
importance of domestic architecture in relation to 
the exercise of most basic capabilities. Now, there 
may not seem anything “particularly autonomous 
or self-assertive or civically republican or ethically 
ennobling about sleeping or cooking or urinating.”7 
These are actions and activities that we rarely find 
referenced in philosophical treaties or doctrines 
on space. Still, it very much matters when people 
are not free to perform such actions. Maybe we 
think that sleeping and excreting aren’t dignified 
actions, but we can nevertheless agree that there is 
something profoundly, inherently undignified about 
preventing someone from performing these actions. 
If a person needs to urinate, what she needs above 
all as a dignified person is the “freedom to do so in 
privacy and relative independence of the arbitrary 
will of anyone else.”8 Waldron wants his readers 
to realize that the access to an adequate dwelling 
literally corresponds to the freedom to be in some 
delimitated, physical place—at least one place—to 
undertake basic human functions. Remember that 
if we are not at liberty to undertake these basic 

    who has no 
site of dwelling 

is completely 
and at all times 
at the mercy of 

others.  

“

”



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activities, we are not, properly stated, able to live at all. Consequently, 
impairment of normal functioning through housing inadequacy constitutes 
a fundamental injustice: a harmful restriction on one’s capabilities, on her 
individual freedom and on individual opportunity related to our “normal, 
species-typical” opportunity range.9 Or, to put it plainly, impairment of 
normal functioning through housing inadequacy constitutes a severe right 
violation.

Let me shortly return to Il Tetto. When I spoke of Luisa and Natale’s 
little shack, I associated it with commonplace imaginaries of control and 
identifiable boundaries, with notions of refuge and individuality. This 
ought to be emphasized, the existential importance of one’s dwelling 
goes beyond the provision of life-sustaining material equipment. It must 
also provide for security of possession and tranquility. Walls of houses 
shall not be trespassed, windows shall not be shattered, nor shall doors 
be forced open. What is found inside one’s house, bodies, objects or 
resources, must be shielded for this house to be deemed adequate. The 

haven that our young Italian couple hurriedly erected overnight provides 
them with tools of subsistence, but also with the abovementioned security 
of possession and tranquility. These provisions are equally important 
and interconnected. They jointly participate in enabling individuals’ 
basic functions. Interestingly, one key aspect of the institution of private 
property is shown here. As an institution, property is a salutary social 
arrangement which ensures a more functional, safe and peaceful life with 
others.10 Private property has been broadly celebrated as that which can 

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guarantee independence by providing the material 
basis for self-reliance, as well as that which can 
secure a space free from the arbitrary power of other 
individuals (a critical form of self-defense against 
outer domination or abuse). And it is no coincidence 
that the latter feature recalls Waldron’s portrayal of 
persons without dwelling as “completely and at 
all times at the mercy of others,” and needing the 
“freedom, privacy and relative independence of the 
arbitrary will of anyone else.” To be housed holds an 
existential significance. As they work to guarantee 
a certain level of security and the satisfaction of 
our basic needs, we accept and respect property 
arrangements.11 These arrangements are formalized 
as the built infrastructure of villages, towns and 
cities. In ‘Property and Necessity’ (1990), Richard 
A. Epstein confirms these advantages, when he 
discusses the “powerful,” “wonderful idea” of 
private property as a legal and sociocultural model.12 
While he warns his readership that such a model 
cannot define a complete state of affairs between 
individuals, and that it must allow for holdouts, 
Epstein demonstrates the beneficial effects of these 
property rights in terms of personal freedom, 
welfare, and skill development. As new dwellers, 
Luisa and Natale can now enjoy the institutionalized 
protection of their physical person and possessions. 
They can rest assured, and so, hope to flourish. 

Life-sustaining appropriateness of public and private 
architectures, with remarks on houses
In light of these security-related features 

of property, natural interrogations arise. Is 
it an unreasonable assumption to equate the 
infrastructure which allows for basic human 
activities with the architecture of housing? What are 
the different relations of property which might 
bring safety and tranquility about? Can individuals 
not achieve subsistence and security of possession 
in other built environments? Are public spaces 
really not fit for sustaining such bodily life and 



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development? After all, Waldron’s ‘Homelessness and the Issue of Freedom’ 
presents a conceptual defense of one’s right to a place, not a house. It first 
looks like that those essential actions and activities which we carry on in 
our home could simply be carried on elsewhere. This greatly diminishes 
the significance of dwelling adequacy in a rights perspective, as individuals 
who are not properly housed are at liberty to undertake these important 
actions elsewhere. Such a refutation has been prompted against homeless 
individuals and anti-homelessness activists when they invoke the human 
right to a house. The reply goes along the line that being housed is not the 
only condition or space to undertake situated acts like cooking, sleeping, 
showering, and so on. Under this view, a defense of housing-related bodily 
considerations simply proves the importance of our individual right to 
some kind of place—this doesn’t mean that this place should be a house. It 
might be, indeed, a public space, like a municipal restroom, a street bench 
or a subway platform. It could be an underpass, a free urban camping, 
a gazebo in the town hall’s gardens. To homeless individuals, these sites 
are accessible on account of their outer, open-air situation. This simple 
insight reminds us of where we began. There exists an architectural inside 
and outside; both inside and outside spaces operate according to a given 
set of rules—a bundle of property laws. A stringent set of rules protects 
architectural “insides” (houses, but also schools, banks, shops) and their 
occupants in ways that allow them to safely undertake various life-enabling 
doings. If public spaces are to be understood as the negative of buildings, or 
architectural “outsides,” a different set of rules is enforced.13 What’s more, 
these very rules often tend to work against the realization and protection 
of individual, essential functions. 

Admittedly, it has become increasingly difficult to ignore the current, 
severe forms of policing one’s actions in public places. This phenomenon 
is observable in cities across the Global North and South.14 A large number 
of laws prohibit behaviors that we have identified as necessary to the 
accomplishment of basic human activities. Think of barbecuing in a city 
park (one must eat), sleeping overnight in a bus shelter (one must sleep), 
bathing in a retention basin (one must wash) or urinating in the street (one 
must excrete). We are forbidden to carry out these acts in many public sites. 
The rules regulating what one is free to do in such sites frequently turn 
out to be as stringent and exclusive as those exerted by private property 
owners. This puts individuals back in a position where they have to ask for 
permission (from public authorities) to undertake the basic functions that 
make life possible, thereby violating their personal freedom to do so. So, 
the right to undertake these basic functions seems to demand more than 
the right to be in a public space, or any space. It implies the possibility 



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of occupying an architectural “inside.” Now, there 
exists instances of outer, open-air sites where 
propertyless individuals are allowed to undertake 
basic, bodily actions and activities. Think for a 
start of the wide outdoors of Norway or Sweden, 
where a long-established Allemannsretten (right to 
roam) ensures everyone’s access to the resources and 
space of the wilderness. Though I focus here on 
villages, towns and cities; defining public spaces as 
the negative of built infrastructure does suppose a 
minimum concentration of buildings. Architectural 
traditions of public restrooms (Singapore leads by 
example) are still present in several urban centers. 
So are municipal washbasins (Portuguese lavatórios 
públicos, among others) and drinking fountains 
(see the Cochabamba public water facilities, 
established after the activist pressure of the Bolivian 
Coordinadora para la Defensa del Agua y de la 
Vida). In North Africa, communal bread ovens, an 
institution of their own, guarantee one’s possibility 
to bake. Long iftar (fast-breaking) tables are 
deployed in the streets of many Near and Middle 
Eastern cities. Such formal typologies still stand, but 
in diminished numbers. Since the modernization 
and privatization of household equipment, many of 
them were effectively dismantled and abandoned, 
and refashioned inside the domestic space.15 
Stricter policing of streets, squares or urban parks 
ensued: law infringements and displays of so-
called inappropriate behavior in common urban 
environments are known to be disciplined with 
hefty fines. It appears that, for a critical number of 
extant (homeless) individuals, their right to carry 
out basic bodily functions does necessitate more 
than the right to be in a public space, thus pointing 
to the occupation of an architectural “inside.” But 
should these “insides” be de facto houses? 

I argue that they should. The aforesaid principles 
of security of possession and tranquility are hardly 
ensured in drop-in shelters, charity dormitories, 
and other public refuges, where permanent 

defining 
public spaces 

as the negative 
of built 

infrastructure 
does suppose 

a minimum 
concentration 

of buildings.

“

”



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occupancy and object storage are, to a large extent, proscribed. Without 
sturdy dividing walls, safe storage, padlocks or the likes, one lacks the 
privacy and the autonomy of dignified life, and is left in a position of 
vulnerability.16 We already know that lacking a permanent house already 
means to expose one’s body to numerous threats and deprivations, which 
incapacitate homeless individuals in ways that prevent them to lead a 
decent or minimally-good existence (even less a flourishing one). The 
straightforward value of our reflection on commonplace imaginaries of 
control and identifiable boundaries lies in showing us that even in cases 
where their bodies are sheltered within walls and under roofs, people 
remain critically incapacitated. As private architectural “insides”, houses 
participate in good mental health as much as in good physical one. 
Without these dimensions of security, tranquility, intimacy, and so on, 
public shelters can’t be places where one develops and makes good use 
of her basic functions. If a situated place to be doesn’t provide us with 

the freedom, privacy and relative independence from the arbitrary will of 
anyone else, it remains deeply inadequate. Recalling living out in the streets 
or in temporary shelters, many individuals spoke of a feeling that they 
didn’t (have the capability to) have a life worth living, as if their individual 
resilience had derived from solid walls which were no longer.17 Vittorio 
De Sicca’s dramatic script plays on this idea that, as new “homeowners,” 
Luisa and Natale can truly begin to live. In a few words, we need here 
to consider the different modes of ownership—or, to formulate it in an 
Epsteinian manner, the different relations of property, which enable the 

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good exercise of people’s most basic activities. I 
follow UN-Habitat, the United Nations Human 
Settlements program for human settlements and 
sustainable urban development, in identifying 
“secure tenure” as the important feature in one’s 
relation of property to housing.18 Secure tenure 
refers to legal recognition of one’s control over 
her living space, through ownership or usufruct. 
This is really key. Individuals can assuredly achieve 
adequacy in dwelling through rental situations; 
despite the widespread association of the advantages 
of private property with home ownership, usufruct 
forms of tenure can allow for security of possession 
and tranquility.19 In all cases, it is my opinion that 
they only do so when non-owners (tenants on the 
private rental market and in public social housing) 
have a reasonable level of control over the place that 
they occupy, and when permanent place attachment 
is made possible through strong rent contract 
protections. The details fall outside the scope of my 
brief exploration here, but it is important to stress 
that adequate usufruct can enable basic, housing-
contingent functions.  

The right of necessity revisited
We have established the importance of dwelling 

architecture: while it may vary in size or shape, 
the inner place that we call home enables essential 
actions and activities. To be deprived of housing is 
a direct threat to one’s existence. This interrelation 
is reflected by the human right to housing and its 
associated claims and duties. Walls, doors, windows, 
ceilings and floors are more than ordinary material 
arrangements. They protect our bodies and minds, 
they allow for our most vital interests and functions 
to be realized, and to develop. And, given this special, 
situated importance, they are themselves protected 
by potent property laws. In the last part of this 
article, I utilize the political philosophy of Alejandra 
Mancilla to clarify the moral underpinnings of 
property rights. In particular, I examine the weighty 



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ways in which this “bundle of rights” relates to dire housing deprivation and 
needs.20 Mancilla’s thought-provoking writings on moral cosmopolitanism 
and global poverty shed new light on the permissibility of actions in the 
face of such housing deprivation, by advocating the right of necessity, a 
right of the needy to take the material resources they need for subsistence, 
from those who are not similarly needy.21 It is a privilege (absence of duty 
not to take others’ possessions to ensure one’s own subsistence) as well as a 
claim (you have a duty not to stop the needy from taking your possessions). 
While it first seems at odds with the institution of private property, the 
right of necessity is actually consistent with accepting its very legitimacy. 
Richard Epstein reminds us that the recognition of the right of necessity is, 
in effect, one of the internal limitations which ought to be included in any 
such legitimate institution, an escape valve of sorts. A system of exceptions 
based upon strong, if variegated, perceptions of necessity, is necessary to 
people’s endorsement of private property as a prime social arrangement.22 
The moral intuition at play is that no system of property entitlements that 
could “reasonably command the acceptance of all who are subject to it” 
could include a requirement that an individual starve or freeze to death 
as the cost of respecting the proprietorial rights of others over what one 
needs to survive.23 In emergency scenarios of necessity, and as a means 
of last resort, the law must allow for entries upon land and interference 
with personal property that would otherwise have been trespass. Alejandra 
Mancilla builds from this operation of justification, arguing that it is 
unreasonable to restrict the right of necessity to emergency cases, when the 
global economic order is structured in a way that maintains millions in a 
precarious state. Or, to realign this line of thought to the present paper: it 
is unreasonable to do so when housing markets worldwide are structured 
in ways that maintain many in a precarious state with regard to dwelling 
adequacy. 

Consider the four following scenarios. 1) While on a hiking trip on 
some high mountain plateau, you get lost without proper clothing and 
equipment. You are alone, exposed, and frozen. But you finally spot a hut 
in the distance. When you go there, you find its door locked. You then 
proceed to break one window, crawl inside and find shelter until aid comes. 
2) On a sail trip with your family, a violent storm breaks out. You manage 
to approach some private pier and moor your boat to it, guaranteeing you 
and your family’s safety, and protecting the boat from material damages. 
3) You are a homeless individual in the cold winter night. The town’s drop-
in refuge is situated at too long a walking distance, and you are fighting 
sleep. You are alone, exposed, and frozen. Spotting a tenement building 
with an empty ground floor, you go there and find its door locked. You 



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then proceed to break one window, crawl inside 
and find shelter until the day comes. 4) You are 
a homeless individual in the extreme heatwave of 
the summer. You feel weak, debilitated by heat 
exhaustion. No one offers you water or help. You 
climb over the fence of a private courtyard and 
jump in the fresh pool, cooling your body down. 
These four scenarios describe emergency situation 
where one’s subsistence is at stake, but 1) and 2) are 
often more readily accepted as invocations of the 
right of necessity.24 As Mancilla puts it well, 

in our current world, acceptance of the right of 
necessity remains confined to cases of one-off, 
mostly naturally caused emergencies. … This 
means that if an individual takes someone else’s 
property and claims that he did so because his 
right to subsistence was unmet, he will probably 
end up punished by society and by the law: 
common morality tends to sanction property 
infringements almost with no exceptions, and 
legal systems reject exculpation based on extreme 
poverty or indigence.25     

We should ask ourselves: should we uphold a 
narrow conception of the right of necessity when 
current urban and economic arrangements, and 
their related application of property rights, have not 
been designed in a manner that guarantees access 
to minimum material provisions for all? Entry 
upon land and interference with personal property 
do appear reasonable and acceptable in urban 
milieus which lack the infrastructure to provide 
the needy with housing. This is a provocative 
statement, especially when contrasted with our 
past examination of the importance of security of 
possession and tranquility: the claim which follows 
from the invocation of one’s right of necessity (well-
off individuals mustn’t prevent a destitute person 
from taking their possessions) proves to be extremely 
demanding. I have pleaded that a house is not a 
standing reserve, or an investment opportunity, but 
the armature for self-integrity and bodily security: 

Entry upon 
land and 

interference 
with personal 

property 
do appear 

reasonable and 
acceptable in 
urban milieus 

which lack the 
infrastructure 

to provide the 
needy with 

housing.

“

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it ought not to be violated. Human freedom, autonomy, health, dignity, 
agency— these notions are to be safeguarded by enforcing property rights, 
because such rights suppose a basic guarantee of security. Controlling 
one’s own home is an immediate expression of one’s will. Freedom is not 
something which just occurs in thought. It requires some physical domain 
outside the person’s own mind where she can actualize her will, without 
external interference. Yet again, if subsistence cannot be ensured in public 
spaces, or through welfare programs and social architecture, necessity can 
justify the infringement of one’s home. But this is an untenable prospect 
for any functional, organized society. I believe that these tensions (and 
our overall normative findings on property, necessity and the architecture 
of housing) reveal the special responsibility of states in ensuring their 
citizens’ vital human activities and interests, through the realization of 
housing adequacy for all. In other words, it is morally incumbent on 
states to rearrange property provisions in a way that does not leave the 
houseless in a position where they may legitimately invoke their right of 
necessity.26 Housing shortages and deprivations are attributable to the 
way in which current human institutions are framed. Cultures such as 
ours, where ordinary circumstances consist in severe housing inadequacy 
co-existing with extreme wealth and luxurious dwelling (according to 
numbers collated in recent years, “more than 11 million homes lied empty 
in Europe alone, enough to house all of the continent’s homeless twice 
over”),27 must undergo change. Through redistributive policies, projects 
and statutes, governments are best suited for implementing such a change. 

The ramifying details of housing-related duties borne by states deserve 
a separate investigation. Suffice it to conclude by asserting that in a 
hypothetical society where the universal fulfillment of the human right 
to housing is guaranteed under normal circumstances, the exercise of the 
right of necessity would be confined to exceptional situations like scenarios 
1) and 2). And until such hypothetical societies become reality, and while 
they work on the implementation of new housing schemes (construction 
of social units, rent caps, expropriations of speculative architecture), state 
authorities should refrain from strictly policing certain open spaces in the 
city. Il Tetto’s Luisa and Natale could attempt at building and keeping their 
shack because the regulations of 1950s Rome allowed for people to secure 
their right to a parcel of land and house if they manage to construct the 
latter without being stopped by the authorities. This suggests something 
like the beginning of a humanist attitude of tolerance and flexibility 
(or even a sense of justice)  in the face of immediate, bodily necessity. 
Similarly, we can think of the Chilean callamperos (urban propertyless), a 
group of working-class people who, between the 1950s and 1970s, became 



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known for occupying some empty patches of 
Santiago overnight. Remarkably, these callamperos 
were rarely evicted. If municipal actors tried to 
pursue this path of eviction, the callamperos resisted 
pacifically until the latter gave up. This amounted 
to a tacit approval of their occupying actions by 
the authorities, as well as the surrounding city 
dwellers.28 These two historical cases teach us a 
worthy lesson. The infrastructure of housing is 
expansive and expensive: given the impossibility 
of immediate remediation of what were severe 
shortages of dwelling, the municipal governments 
of Rome and Santiago showed leniency towards 
what was allowed in the open air, public spaces of 
their cities. We should follow their example, as of 
today and in coming times of housing crises. 

Endnotes
1. Richard A. Epstein, ‘Property and Necessity’, 

Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy, Vol.3, 
1990, 4.

2. Property and its declinations in private, common 
or communal subgroups refers to the rules that 
govern people’s access to and control of things: it 
is a feature of human cultures across the world. 
Yet, it must be stressed that a lot of African, 
Indian, Asian, or North American indigenous 
architecture are articulated around deeply 
different notions of privacy and publicness, 
privileging togetherness in ways that make little 
importance of walls and hard boundaries (think 
of the Jewish kibbutz, one example among 
other). This topic is deserving of a stand-alone 
study, and so falls outside the scope of the present 
paper.

3. Peter King, ‘Housing as a freedom right’, Housing 
Studies, Vol.18, No.5, 2011, 661.

4. Jeremy Waldron, ‘Homelessness and the Issue of 
Freedom’, UCLA Law Review 295, 1992, 296

5. Ibid., 296.
6. Ibid., 296.



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7. Ibid., 296.
8. Ibid., 321-322.
9. Norman Daniels, ‘Health-Care Needs and Distributive Justice’, 

Philosophy of Public Affairs, Vol.4, No.2, 219.
10. Alejandra Mancilla, The Right of Necessity: Moral Cosmopolitanism and 

Global Poverty (London: Rowman & Littlefield, 2016), 15.
11. Mancilla, The Right of Necessity, 15.
12. Epstein, ‘Property and Necessity’, 3-4.
13. Again, there exists many examples of non-Western cultures where (for 

reasons linked to social traditions, climate, and so on) the difference 
between inside and outside is much more diffused—it is softer than 
the hard limits of walls and fences that we associate with the division of 
space in Western cultures.

14. UN-Habitat, The Right to Adequate Housing, 2009; https://www.ohchr.
org/documents/publications/fs21_rev_1_housing_en.pdf.

15. Human Rights Council, Report of the Special Rapporteur on the human 
right to safe drinking water and sanitation, 2011; https://www2.ohchr.
org/english/bodies/hrcouncil/docs/18session/A-HRC-18-33-Add4_
en.pdf.

16. Carol McNaughton Nicholls, Transitions through Homelessness: Lives on 
the Edge (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), 17.

17. McNaughton Nicholls, Transitions through Homelessness, 17.
18. UN-Habitat, The Right to Adequate Housing.
19. Stuart Hodkinson, ‘The Return of the Housing Question’, Ephemera | 

Theory & Politics in Organization, Vol.12, No.4, 2012, 426.
20. Epstein, ‘Property and Necessity’, 2-3.
21. Alejandra Mancilla quoted in Garrett Cullity, ‘Mancilla, Alejandra. 

The Right of Necessity’, Ethics, No.128, 2017, 260.
22. Epstein, ‘Property and Necessity’, 7-8.
23. Cullity, ‘Mancilla, Alejandra. The Right of Necessity’, 261.
24. We tend to assume that it is no fault of the hiker or the sailor that 

they find themselves using someone else’s property—they were unlucky, 
trapped in a hostile landscape; the hut or the pier was the only possible 
option available to ensure their physical security. On the other hand, we 
tend to assume—and quite uncharitably so—personal failure and fault 
when it comes to homeless individuals’ struggles for necessity; plus, 
cities are dense environments, with a (presupposed) network of available 
resources. According to this logic, violating someone’s property cannot 
be a means of last resort for 3) or 4).

25. Mancilla, The Right of Necessity, 71.
26. Ibid., 71.



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27. Rupert Neate, ‘Scandal of Europe’s 11m 
empty homes’, 2014; https://www.theguardian.
com/society/2014/feb/23/europe-11m-empty-
properties-enough-house-homeless-continent-
twice (accessed 2020-03-17).

28. Mancilla, The Right of Necessity, 87-88. 


