A Study on Public Housing Welfare Legislation : Argentina Ⅰ(Rights to Housing for Elderly people)

Abstract

This paper provides an overview and analysis of Argentina’s main State policies concerning the right to housing of elderly people.

Argentina has one of the oldest pensions schemes in the world, and the country even introduced the draft Declaration of Old Age Rights back in 1948, pioneering the trend towards recognition of specific rights for the elderly. Furthermore, the Argentine National Constitution explicitly recognizes the right to housing. However, as a matter of fact,the real value of pensions in Argentina has suffered a significant decline over the last forty years; in addition, housing policies specifically aimedat alleviating the situation of the elderly have been few in that same period. This paper illustrates this trend, focusing specifically on the changes obtained over the last twenty years.

The paper proceeds as follows. Section 2 provides a brief overview of the Constitutional clauses regulating the right to housing of elderly people, with a particular emphasis on the role of Human Rights treaties under Argentine legal system. Section 3, in turn, examines the evolution of the legal and policy changes in the Argentine pensions’ schemes. The analysis of the pension scheme is of the utmost importance given Argentina’s slow progress in advancing policies specifically geared to satisfy elderly people’s right to housing. It specifically tackles the policies and the regulatory framework aimed at fulfilling the right of housing of the elderly, though it recognizes that most of the time this has been done indirectly, through the standard pensions scheme, and the only ambitious project aimed at specifically addressing the right to housing was eventually vetoed by the executive. Section 4 discusses the relevant case law before Argentine courts. A conclusion summarizes the main findings of this paper.