Cities are becoming increasingly unliveable for most people. Costs are rising but incomes are not. Sky-high rents, evictions, homelessness, and substandard housing are common realities for urban dwellers across the planet. There is a global housing crisis. How did this basic human right get so lost? Who is pushing people out of their homes and cities, and what’s being done to pushback? On the heels of the release of the award-winning documentary, PUSH, filmmaker, Fredrik Gertten and Leilani Farha, the former UN Special Rapporteur on the right to housing, have reconvened. Join the filmmaker and the advocate as they reflect on their experiences making PUSH and exchange ideas and stories about the film's central issue: the financialization of housing and its fall-out. For more about PUSH and to view it: www.pushthefilm.com For more about Fredrik Gertten and his other films: www.wgfilm.comFor more about Leilani Farha in her new role, Global Director of The Shift: www.make-the-shift.org
https://www.wgfilm.com/
episode 2: Cheap debt! Low Taxes! Ireland for Sale
This week, Dublin’s Rory Hearne – author, podcaster, housing campaigner and university lecturer – joins the Filmmaker and The Advocate to explore how big capital came to dominate such a small nation.
The impact of the Global Financial Crisis in ’08 was particularly severe in Ireland, triggering a recession, a huge drop in GDP, high unemployment, and housing precarity. The government’s response was to save the banks by selling off foreclosed mortgages – of which there were many - to hedge funds and global private equity firms. Since then, these actors have dominated the housing sector, lured in by Ireland’s “tax haven” status. In the last year, 95% of new apartments built in Ireland were purchased by institutional financial actors. The impact of all of this? Rental housing costs have skyrocketed and have become unaffordable, young adults are stuck at home living with their parents, and family and child homelessness has become entrenched.
But we couldn’t end the conversation there. Rory picks up on our 2021 challenge to provide listeners with inspiration, detailing the actions and campaigns underway to pushback: grassroots campaigns against the selling-off of public lands, the emergence of a new tenants union, and growing energy to have the right to housing included in Ireland’s Constitution.
Rory Hearne is the author of Housing Shock – The Irish Housing Crisis and How to Solve It and the co-host of Reboot Republic.
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