A/HRC/34/51 than 9 million households being evicted.4 In Spain, more than half a million foreclosures between 2008 and 2013 resulted in over 300,000 evictions. 5 There were almost 1 million foreclosures between 2009 and 2012 in Hungary. 6 6. In many countries in the global South, where the majority of households are unlikely to have access to formal credit, the impact of financialization is experienced differently, but with a common theme — the subversion of housing and land as social goods in favour of their value as commodities for the accumulation of wealth, resulting in widespread evictions and displacement. Informal settlements are frequently replaced by luxury residential and high-end commercial real estate.7 7. While much has been written about the financialization of housing, it has not often been considered from the standpoint of human rights. Decision-making and assessment of policies relating to housing and finance are devoid of reference to housing as a human right. Issues related to business and human rights have received some attention in recent years. However, the housing and real estate sector — the largest business sector with many of the most serious impacts on human rights — appears to have been mostly ignored. 8. A report on the topic is timely as States embark on the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals. If the commitment in target 11.1 to ensure access for all to adequate, safe and affordable housing and basic services is to be achieved by 2030, it is essential to consider the role of international finance and financial actors in housing systems. That will help to identify and address more effectively patterns of systemic exclusion, to ensure more meaningful human rights accountability for issues of displacement, evictions, demolitions and homelessness, and the engagement of all relevant actors in the realization of the right to adequate housing. 9. Constructing human rights accountability within a complex financial system to which Governments are themselves accountable, involving trillions of dollars in assets, may seem a daunting task. However, the global community cannot afford to be cowered by the complexity of financialization. 8 The present report aims to cut through some of the complexity and opaqueness of finance in housing to expose the central relevance and necessity of the human rights paradigm at multiple levels, from the international to the local. 10. The report builds on important work undertaken by the previous Special Rapporteur on the right to housing. In her 2012 report on the impact of finance policies on the right to housing of those living in poverty (A/67/286), she warned of emerging trends towards the financialization of housing encouraged by States’ abandonment of social housing programmes and increased reliance on private market solutions. She documented attempts by States to rely on the private market and homeownership, which increases inequality and fails to address the housing needs of low-income and marginalized groups. More fundamentally, she called for a paradigm shift through which housing would once again be 4 5 6 7 8 4 Saskia Sassen, “Finance as capability: good, bad, dangerous”, 2014, pp. 5-6. Available from http://arcade.stanford.edu/occasion/finance-capability-good-bad-dangerous. Observatory of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and Platform of Mortgage Victims, “Housing emergency in Spain: the crisis of foreclosures and evictions from a human rights perspective” (December 2013), p. 12. Available from http://observatoridesc.org/sites/default/files/2013-housingemergency-spain-observatory-desc.pdf. Saskia Sassen, Expulsions: Brutality and Complexity in the Global Economy (Cambridge, Massachusetts and London, Harvard University Press, 2014), p. 48. Stanley D. Brunn, Maureen Hays-Mitchell and Donald J. Zeigler, eds., Cities of the world: world regional urban development, 5th ed. (Plymouth, Rowman & Littlefield Education, 2012), p. 446. See Saskia Sassen, Expulsions: Brutality and Complexity in the Global Economy (Cambridge, Massachusetts and London, Harvard University Press, 2014).