Prefiguring the right to housing. Right to the city approaches in alternative housing initiatives in Belgium

Alternative housing initiatives (hereafter AHIs) emerge in a context of declining welfare state housing systems and a protracted housing crisis, particularly in urban settings. In Brussels and Flanders, two regions in Belgium with diverging housing systems, AHIs face variegated frictions with existing regulations, highlighting that current conceptions of the right to housing no longer guarantee affordable, adequate, accessible, and secure housing for all. While policies focus on removing obstacles for AHI, they often overlook a more fundamental question: how do AHIs prefigure an expanded notion of the right to housing that better assures housing justice for all in the present. We propose a conceptual framework that links the right to housing to the right to the city and investigate how that framework, can address the frictions faced by AHIs. We conclude that greater legal protection and societal support for alternative property structures, resident autonomy and agency, and neighbourhood and community dimensions, would not only lift frictions for AHIs but also prefigure a right to housing that achieves greater housing justice for all.