Pushed Out – Why You Can’t Afford A House
The right to shelter is a human necessity. The same can be said for food and water without which humans would not exist. Unlike commodities such as gold and silver, access to housing is a human right.
So why is the ability to call a home your own becoming the privilege of the few as opposed to the right of the many?
Host, Ross Ashcroft, met up with former UN Special Rapporteur, Leilani Farha, and Documentary Filmmaker, Fredrik Gertten, to discuss.
Broadcast 19 April 2021 -
7 key points
1) Underpinning gentrification and spiraling house prices, which are pushing a cross section of socioeconomic cohorts into both debt and out of cities, is the displacement of generations by financialization.
2) In what Nicholas Shaxson terms the finance curse, tax haven-based multinationals are buying up huge swaths of prime urban real estate for money laundering and investment purposes in neighbourhoods like London's Notting Hill and Islington.
3) The hollowing out of cities has been perpetuated as a result of the inward flow of corrupt money which the implementation by governments' of golden visa policies have encouraged. This corrupt money then filters into society through the leisure, hospitality, service and culture industries, and thus into wider society, making it difficult for governments' to track its origin.
4) Governments in Berlin, Barcelona, Denmark, Catalonia and elsewhere are recognizing the need for cities to function as real economy wealth creators as opposed to wealth-extracting, investor-driven entities. The problem is the likes of Blackstone and the corporate housing sector in general, wield incredible power.
5) This sector, often with the complicity of governments', uses dissembling language in order to camouflage that its prime purpose is to grab land and asset-strip for quick profit. The economist, Professor Joseph Stiglitz contends that the sector is not concerned with the productive economy but wealth extraction.
6) The logical conclusion of the on-going process of financialization, is impoverished and unsustainable cities. The traditional function of cities as vibrant living and working spaces are being transformed in the interests of corporations and financial capital.
7) The governments mentioned in point 4 above and others, are fighting back having introduced legislation to help rein-in vulture capitalists, capture community created value and prevent the rush for profit and the wrecking of communities.
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