Ontario’s current regulatory approach to low-income housing lies between two primary challenges: the human right to housing, and political/fiscal constraints. This thesis draws on legal theory and economic analysis of law to articulate the proper goals of housing access policy. A structural theory is proposed to explain the normative relationship between efficiency, communitarianism and justice in housing. An array of regulatory options are compared and considered in light of the features that characterize Ontario’s low-income rental housing markets. This analysis favours demand-side housing subsidies to low-income households, combined with supply-side tax expenditures to improve elasticity in the low-income rental market. Further reform of rent and covenant controls, social and affordable housing supply, and land use planning is recommended to ensure an efficient residential tenancy market. These reforms are offered as a framework for the implementation of the human right to housing in Ontario.

Ontario’s current regulatory approach to low-income housing lies between two primary challenges: the human right to housing, and political/fiscal constraints. This thesis draws on legal theory and economic analysis of law to articulate the proper goals of housing access policy. A structural theory is proposed to explain the normative relationship between efficiency, communitarianism and justice in housing. An array of regulatory options are compared and considered in light of the features that characterize Ontario’s low-income rental housing markets. This analysis favours demand-side housing subsidies to low-income households, combined with supply-side tax expenditures to improve elasticity in the low-income rental market. Further reform of rent and covenant controls, social and affordable housing supply, and land use planning is recommended to ensure an efficient residential tenancy market. These reforms are offered as a framework for the implementation of the human right to housing in Ontario.

La tesi si propone di rintracciare all’interno dell’ordinamento italiano una regola giuridica, quanto più generale possibile, suscettibile di applicazione al maggior numero di ipotesi in cui un atto giuridico determina l’alterazione di un ordine dato di priorità applicabile a pretese di azionisti e creditori di una società di capitali. Si rileva, infatti, che il diritto vivente delle garanzie reali possa spesso trovarsi in contrasto con un fondamentale principio di diritto dei contratti: quello di relatività dei loro effetti. Vengono, quindi, isolate, due classi di garanzie reali che, al contrario, risultano essere compatibili con il principio richiamato. Una più ampia regola viene, di seguito, proposta, basata sulla stessa logica che fonda l’istituto dei vantaggi compensativi, funzionale a regolare i fenomeni di alterazione di un ordine di priorità, a prescindere dalla natura della pretesa coinvolta. Essenzialmente, quest’ultima regola costituisce la trasposizione nel linguaggio e nel sistema giuridico del criterio di efficienza di Kaldor-Hicks. Dal lato dei diritti patrimoniali e nel prisma dei problemi “ordinali”, vengono individuate decisive somiglianze tra le pretese a titolo di debito e quelle a titolo di capitale di rischio, cosicché viene proposta l’applicazione di istituti classici del diritto azionario (ad es., il diritto di recesso) alla materia dei rapporti di credito. Definito l’ambito di applicazione dei diritti reali di garanzia e riconosciuta la maggior efficienza di strutture del passivo costruite prevalentemente sullo schema della subordinazione invece che su quello della preferenza, si propone di attuare un netto passaggio di sistema dal secondo schema al primo. Lo studio si conclude misurando i risultati ottenuti sugli analoghi fenomeni che si verificano nell’ambito della disciplina del sistema finanziario. / This thesis aims at finding in the Italian legal system a general rule able to provide a guidance for the modification of the order of priority of claims against limited liability corporations. It is argued that the applicable legal approach to security interests could often be in contrast with a basic principle of contract law: relativity. Therefore, firstly, two classes of security interests that proved to be coherent with the aforementioned principle are described. Secondly, a wider rule based on a logic of compensation is put forward and tested on some particular cases. Basically, this rule is a transposition into legal terms of the well-known Kaldor-Hicks criterion. On the economic rights side, similarities are founded between credit claims and equity claims about order issues, so that the compensation rule is thought as applicable, almost equivalently, to both types of claims. Application to a certain class of creditors of “organizational rules” (for example, right of withdrawal) typically provided by law for shareholders is also suggested. Defined the scope of application of security interests and considered the efficiency gains that are achievable by subordination structures instead of priority ones, it is proposed to pursue the same goal of modifying a given order of priority, through subordination agreements. Finally, these results are discussed taking into account some financial law topics.