Eviction of a mother and her minor son from a publicly owned hostel. Violation of the right to respect for their home
JUDGEMENT
Mukovoz v. Ukraine 12.01.2023 (app. no. 17414/11)
SUMMARY
The applicant, together with her minor son, was forced to leave a public hostel apartment in which they were staying, on the grounds that the lease she had with the University, to which she belonged, had expired. On 30 October 2009, the applicant challenged her eviction in court.
According to article 132 of the Housing Code, which prohibited the eviction from corporate hostels of active employees raising children as single parents, she was entitled to retain her occupancy, since her employment contract with the University had recently been extended. She also alleged that she had had to finance the flat’s complete renovation, including the installation of sanitary facilities, before moving in, and that regard being had to that special effort and to the personal ties her family had formed with the flat since 2005, its sudden and unexplained reallocation to an unspecified third party might have been an act of corruption. Finally, the applicant noted that she was in a precarious situation, namely that she was raising her minor child alone, that her child suffered from several chronic illnesses (she submitted medical certificates) and that keeping the lease was a matter of vital importance to her.
The Court notes that the applicant’s eviction from a corporate hostel owned by a public college amounted to an interference with her right to respect for her home, and that this fact was not in dispute between the parties. At the same time the Court noted that the reasoning adduced by the Court of Appeal in its judgment indicates that, having decided that the applicant’s lease agreement had expired, the court gave that factor paramount importance.
The Court did not found that the domestic judicial authorities provided sufficient reasons to show that there was a pressing social need for the eviction. So, it found that there has been a violation of Article 8 of the Convention. It held that the respondent State was to pay the applicant EUR 4,500 in respect of non‑pecuniary damage.
PROVISION
Article 8
PRINCIPAL FACTS
The case concerns the applicant’s complaints that her eviction, together with her minor son, from a publicly owned hostel had not been lawful and necessary and that the domestic courts had not provided adequate reasons for their decisions relating to the matter, nor had they afforded an effective remedy for her grievances. The applicant relied on Articles 6, 8 and 13 of the Convention.
On 1 September 2009 the administration of the Information Technology and Land Management College (“the College”, a public educational facility affiliated to the National Aviation University (“the University”), of which the applicant was a faculty member at the material time, demanded that the applicant and her minor son vacate the College’s hostel, as their lease agreement had expired.
On 30 October 2009 the applicant challenged that demand in court. She noted that a studio flat in that hostel had been allocated to her in March 2005 in connection with her employment at the University. It had been her and her son’s only home. Administratively, their residence was regularised via several fixed-term lease contracts. However, in accordance with Article 132 of the Housing Code, which prohibited the eviction from corporate hostels of active employees raising children as single parents, she was entitled to retain her occupancy, since her employment contract with the University had recently been extended. She also alleged that she had had to finance the flat’s complete renovation, including the installation of sanitary facilities, before moving in, and that regard being had to that special effort and to the personal ties her family had formed with the flat since 2005, its sudden and unexplained reallocation to an unspecified third party might have been an act of corruption. Finally, the applicant noted that she was in a precarious situation, namely that she was raising her minor child alone, that her child suffered from several chronic illnesses (she submitted medical certificates) and that keeping the lease was a matter of vital importance to her.
On 16 February 2010 the Sviatoshinskyi District Court in Kyiv allowed the applicant’s claim. Referring to Article 132 of the Housing Code, the District Court found that she could not be evicted as her employment contract with the University had been extended.
On 14 July 2010 the Kyiv City Court of Appeal allowed the defendant’s appeal and ordered the applicant’s eviction on the ground that her lease agreement had expired. The court did not respond to the applicant’s arguments as regards her personal circumstances or her argument that she had a special entitlement under Article 132 of the Housing Code for her lease to be extended.
The applicant also reiterated her arguments concerning her precarious situation and significant personal ties with the disputed flat and noted that the College administration had implicitly considered the lease agreement valid, as it had continued to send her invoices for the monthly rent and utility charges related to the flat, and she had dutifully and regularly paid them. The applicant’s request for leave to appeal having been rejected by the Supreme Court on 21 September 2010, she and her son were evicted in October 2010.
THE DECISION OF THE COURT…
The applicant complained that her eviction had been neither lawful nor necessary and that the Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court had failed to provide adequate responses to her main arguments and to assess her personal circumstances. In response to the Government’s objection that she had abused her right of application as she had failed to inform either the domestic authorities or the Court that she owned a residential house which she had inherited in the village of Parkhomivka, the applicant noted that that house was uninhabitable and that it was located some 400 kilometres away from her employer in Kyiv in a dying village with no infrastructure. She could therefore neither live in that house, nor possibly raise money to finance her accommodation in Kyiv by either renting or selling it.
The Government contended that there had been no breach of Article 8 in the present case.
Reviewing the facts of the present case in the light of its established case-law (see, among other authorities, McCann v. the United Kingdom, no. 19009/04, § 50, ECHR 2008, and Kryvitska and Kryvitskyy v. Ukraine, no. 30856/03, §§ 42-44, 2 December 2010), the Court noted that the applicant’s eviction from a corporate hostel owned by a public college amounted to an interference with her right to respect for her home, and that this fact was not in dispute between the parties.
The Court was prepared to accept that the disputed interference could have pursued a legitimate aim, namely the protection of the rights of other persons affiliated with the University and the College who needed housing, and that it had some basis in domestic law, in particular in the provisions of contract law, as interpreted by the national courts.
At the same time the Court noted that the reasoning adduced by the Court of Appeal in its judgment indicates that, having decided that the applicant’s lease agreement had expired, the court gave that factor paramount importance. It provided no further reasoning for rejecting the applicant’s other arguments, in particular the one accepted earlier by the first-instance court that by virtue of Article 132 of the Housing Code, the applicant was entitled to retain her lease because her employment contract had been extended. Nor did the Court of Appeal address the applicant’s other arguments or indicate, in any manner, that it had sought to weigh the defendant’s decision to recover the flat for the benefit of unspecified third parties against the applicant’s submission that retaining the lease was an issue of vital importance for her and her minor son. In these circumstances, the Court couldn’t find that the domestic judicial authorities provided sufficient reasons to show that there was a pressing social need for the eviction or that they justified its proportionality for the purposes of Article 8 of the Convention.
The Court has already found violations of Article 8 of the Convention in other cases, in particular against Ukraine, where the applicants did not have the benefit, in the context of proceedings concerning eviction from public housing, of an examination of the necessity of the interference (see, for example, Kryvitska and Kryvitskyy, cited above, §§ 51-52; Dakus, cited above, §§ 52‑53; and Sadovyak v. Ukraine [Committee], no. 17365/14, §§ 34-35).
The ECHR found that there has been a violation of Article 8 of the Convention and held that the respondent State was to pay the applicant EUR 4,500 in respect of non-pecuniary damage.
