Property and Pandemics: Property Law Responses to Covid-19 is an edited collection of research essays. It stems from a research project under the auspices of the South African Research Chair in Property Law that was conceptualised early in 2020 when the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic were first becoming evident globally.

This collection offers critical perspectives on the role that property law rules and principles played in the responses of different states to the pandemic. The contributions challenge readers to think about how property law can or should respond to drastically changing circumstances.

The research is centred around four themes that intend to highlight

the role that property law has played in governmental responses to the pandemic. The role of the home takes centre stage in considering how the instruction to ‘shelter in place’ carried with it a host of assumptions about the accessibility, availability and habitability of housing. Secondly, the constitutionality of regulations that affect the so-called ‘normal’ use and enjoyment of property is considered. Thirdly, spatial implications of the pandemic are set out, to consider how rural residents stand to be affected in specific and diverse ways. Finally, from a theoretical perspective, scholars consider systemic views of how property law fits into larger conversations about human flourishing, public health and resilience to disasters.

Property and Pandemics: Property Law Responses to Covid-19 will be of interest to property law scholars, lawyers, activists and policy makers who are interested in engaging with the socio-economic effects of the Covid-19 pandemic from the perspective of developments in property law

Sheltering in place: Covid-19 and the home

• Chapter 1: The Scottish response to the Covid-19 pandemic in the private rented sector – Malcolm M Combe 
• Chapter 2: Protecting the ‘home’ against counter-spoliation during Covid-19 – Charlene Kreuser & Petra Marais
• Chapter 3: Never waste a good crisis: The Covid-19 pandemic and housing policy reform – Carolien Kriek & Renier Kriek
• Chapter 4: Covid-19 and the homeless: Compounding the vulnerability of an already vulnerable group – Sameera Mahomedy
• Chapter 5: The position of residential tenants who are unable to pay rent or utility bills during the Covid-19 pandemic – Lerato Ngwenyama
• Chapter 6: Community and condominium: Covid-19 as engine for innovation? – Vincent Sagaert & Benjamin Verheye
• Chapter 7: Guarding against the illegal eviction of unlawful occupiers during a pandemic – Gustav Muller & Alison Vadachalam
• Chapter 8: The consequences of the tenants’ failure to fulfil their payment obligations during Covid-19 and the national lockdown – Michele van Eck
• Chapter 9: Securing possession of the home in the Covid-19 context: The Irish experience – Rachael Walsh

Covid-19 Regulations and constitutional property law

• Chapter 10: Covid-19 regulations and expropriation: Can an owner .claim compensation in terms of Section 25 of the Constitution when the Covid-19 regulations infringe on property rights? – Elmien du Plessis
• Chapter 11: The constitutionality of the Covid-19 moratorium on evictions in South Africa – Gaopalelwe Mathiba

Spatial aspects of the Covid-19 pandemic

• Chapter 12: Waste reclaimers and the revocation of permissive space in the pandemic – Lizette Grobler & Rinie Schenk
• Chapter 13: Access to land for subsistence and small-scale farmers: Cultivating a crop of legally secure rights post-pandemic – Tina Kotzé
• Chapter 14: South African rural women’s land rights and the Covid-19 pandemic: A silver lining or another sailed ship? – Mpho Ts'episo Tlale

Theoretical and systemic responses to the Covid-19 pandemic

• Chapter 15: Private property as public unhealth: A critical-systemic paradigm in times of  rises – Reshard Lee Kolabhai
• Chapter 16: A generative property response to Covid-19 – Christina Refhilwe Mosalagae
• Chapter 17: What can (South African) property lawyers learn from resilience thinking? An  exploratory note on the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic – Elsabé van der Sijde

Index

OF INTEREST TO

• Property law scholars
• Lawyers
• Activists
• Policy makers