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Distributed for University of British Columbia Press

Legal Unhousing

Power, Rights, and Housing Precarity

Legal Unhousing exposes the often unseen ways in which legal processes work to remove people from their homes.

A growing number of people in Canada face difficulty in finding and keeping adequate, affordable accommodation. Anna Lund and Sarah Buhler have assembled a superb group of scholars to investigate the concept of unhousing across a wide variety of legal fields: residential tenancies, human rights, municipal planning, mortgage enforcement and securitization, Aboriginal law, disability rights, prison administration, and judgment enforcement. Their findings reveal that the law can be a powerful force of expulsion and dispossession.

At the same time, contributors offer rich evidence of resistance to legal unhousing. They illuminate how creative legal practices can assert housing as a human right by emphasizing the links between a stable, satisfactory place to live and people’s well-being, dignity, and humanity. This compassionate study reinforces a fundamental shared truth: there’s no place like home. It emphasizes that law can play a role in ensuring that every person has a home.


366 pages | 1 table | 6 x 9 | © 2026

Law and Society

Law and Legal Studies: Law and Society

Political Science: Public Policy, Urban Politics


Reviews

“In the face of ineffective or unjust government action, housing issues are fought out in courts across Canada. Legal Unhousing exposes the often-hidden role of law not only in creating and reinforcing housing precarity and displacement in Canada, but its potential to remedy this complex and seemingly intractable challenge.”

Martha Jackman, Faculty of Law, University of Ottawa

“With diverse methodological perspectives and careful attention to different sites of shelter, from the private rental sector and homeownership to homelessness, encampments, and institutional housing, Legal Unhousing is an important contribution to this fast-changing field.”

Nicholas Blomley, Department of Geography, Simon Fraser University

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