Seven Helsingor Families Face Former Landlord in Denmark's Supreme Court

Seven families from Helsingor, a coastal city north of Copenhagen, are facing their former landlord in Denmark's Supreme Court over their evictions. The two-day hearing began on Friday, 6 November.

The families' leases were terminated in 2022 under a 2018 Danish law once known as the 'ghetto law'. The law targets social housing estates where more than half of residents are classed as 'non-Western'. In Helsingor, the landlord, Boliggarden, announced in early 2020 that it would renovate 96 apartments at the Nojsomhed estate, and then terminated tenants' leases, according to Al Jazeera.

The families' lawyer, Eddie Khawaja, told AFP that the case turns on whether the criteria based on tenants' origin are neutral. The Danish government says the law is aimed at integration.

The 'non-Western' label is an official statistical category. Statistics Denmark counts as non-Western any country outside the European Union, apart from a short list of exceptions that includes Australia, Canada, Norway, Switzerland and the United States. The label extends to descendants, including people born in Denmark if neither parent is a Danish citizen born in the country. The UN Human Rights Office set out this definition in 2020.

The law is part of a Danish plan titled "One Denmark without Parallel Societies: No Ghettos in 2030". Under it, the government names so-called "parallel societies" each December 1. These are social housing areas of at least 1,000 people where more than 50 percent are non-Western immigrants or descendants, and which also meet two of four criteria covering unemployment, crime, education and income.

An area listed for five years becomes a "transformation area", a term the government used to describe as "hard ghettos". Such areas must cut public family housing to 40 percent by 2030, through sales, demolition or conversion. Tenants' associations estimate that about 11,000 people across Denmark will have to leave their homes by 2030 under the law.

The law has been challenged in other cases. A dozen residents of Mjolnerparken, a residential area in Copenhagen, first filed a case against Denmark's Ministry of Social Affairs in 2020. Muhammad Aslam, 58, chairman of the Mjolnerparken housing association, was evicted under Denmark's housing dispersal policy together with his wife.

In February 2025, an adviser to the European Court of Justice said the housing dispersal policy is discriminatory. In December 2025, the court itself, the EU's highest court, said in a preliminary ruling that the 'ghetto law' might lead to an increased risk of early lease termination and eviction for residents.