Scientific summary 

Thousands of people are evicted annually in the Netherlands, with devastating impacts on individuals and society. While national courts have a key task in protecting human rights, legal research shows that international human rights law demands stronger protection from eviction than courts typically provide. Yet, the extent to which Dutch courts protect against eviction remains unclear. Prior research only focuses on private law and tenant housing rights and overlooks the equally important property rights, evictions of other occupiers (e.g., homeowners, squatters), and evictions initiated by local governments (administrative law evictions). This oversight hinders our understanding of how courts adjudicate eviction cases and how these frequent evictions align with international human rights law.

PROHOUSE assesses and explains the extent to which Dutch courts protect citizens from eviction and the impact the rights to housing and property have on judicial decision-making in Dutch eviction litigation. PROHOUSE moves beyond prior research by using innovative machine learning techniques for identifying and analysing eviction judgments and measuring impact.

In four subprojects, I:

• determine the scope and interpretation of the international rights to housing and property in the context of evictions. (Project 1)
• use Machine Learning to identify and explain the factors that influence judicial decision-making in Dutch eviction litigation. I automate identifying and annotating judgments, identify predictors for court decisions, and analyse whether these predictors reflect the rights to housing and property, focusing on private law (Project 2) and administrative law evictions (Project 3). 
• develop a tool named Phria (Property and Housing Rights Interference Alert) to help stakeholders (e.g., evictees, property owners) understand eviction judgments and the role of housing and property rights. (Project 4)

PROHOUSE achieves a breakthrough in understanding judicial decision-making in eviction cases, which is urgently needed to advance the field of housing law and to understand and explain human rights compliance.