Philosophical discussions of gentrification have tended to focus on residential displacement. However, the prevalence of residential displacement is fiercely contested, with many urban geographers regarding it as quite uncommon. This lends some urgency to the underexplored question of how one should evaluate other forms of gentrification. In this paper, I argue that one of the most important harms suffered by victims of displacement gentrification is loss of access to the goods conferred by membership in a thriving local community. Leveraging the (...) social scientific literature, I go on to argue that non-displacement gentrification also often damages local communities. One can hence extend existing philosophical critiques of displacement gentrification to argue that non-displacement gentrification likewise poses a threat to relational equality, and often violates certain basic occupancy rights. Focusing on the value that inheres in thriving local communities also suggests some new possibilities for critiquing gentrification. For instance, existing occupancy rights critiques focus on incumbent land users’ interests in stability. However, one can also argue in a Lockean mode that incumbent land users’ occupancy rights are at least partially grounded in their community having laboured together to create objects of value. An extension of Michael Walzer’s theory of justice to incorporate community goods as a separate ‘sphere’ might also have widespread appeal. Taken together, these arguments constitute a sustained and theoretically ecumenical case for the pro tanto moral objectionability of gentrification. (shrink)

Within the small literature on homelessness in political philosophy, freedom-based accounts loom large. Such accounts, however, give rise to minimalism concerns: concerns that these accounts are too modest in what they demand for those who are homeless, particularly when homelessness is considered in the context of wealthier countries. In this paper, I consider the success of minimalism charges against freedom-based accounts of homelessness. I argue that whilst such charges are aptly levelled against two major freedom-based accounts, from Jeremy Waldron and (...) Christopher Essert, a third account can evade or respond to such charges. This is the autonomy-based account of homelessness. Although the autonomy-based account has come in for significant recent criticism on grounds of minimalism, I argue that properly understood and developed, it has the resources to ground a plausible account of homelessness. (shrink)

This Reply offers my answers to Cheshire Calhoun’s, Elizabeth Brake’s, and Monika Betzler’s wonderful contributions to the Criminal Law and Philosophy symposium on Being Sure of Each Other (2020). Their contributions focus respectively on the conceptual and normative foundations of my defence of our human rights to have adequate social inclusion, the harms that might flow from recognising such rights as human rights, and the impact such rights can have on our most intimate relations. My replies aim both to clarify (...) and solidify the argumentative basis for my account and to show that whatever harms and wrongs might dog the recognition of social human rights are nothing compared to the injustices that flow–and have long-flowed–from ignoring or attacking these rights. (shrink)

This is a reply to “What Makes a Home” by Kimberley Brownlee and David Jenkins. In it, I defend my own account of homelessness, which I call the ‘legal conception’ against their criticism and try to illustrate the differences between my view and theirs, which I call the ‘social conception.’.