In the news

By Kirsten McRae The world is facing two dire crises; the global housing crisis and the climate crisis. The urgency of these crises cannot be overstated. Today, 1.8 billion people worldwide lack access to adequate housing, while in Europe alone, 80 million people face housing unaffordability. Simultaneously, to limit global warming to 1.5°C, we must...

By Kirsten McRae In November of 2023, The Shift joined an existing coalition of more than a dozen non-profits and human rights organizations that constituted the Stop RBC Takeover Campaign, aiming to halt the acquisition of HSBC Canada by the Royal Bank of Canada (RBC). Although a smaller coalition of organizations had been fighting RBC’s...

Source: The Globe & Mail Leilani Farha is global director of The Shift, the former United Nations Special Rapporteur on the right to housing from 2014 to 2020 and the co-host of the bimonthly podcast, Pushback Talks. Diana Chan McNally is a front-line worker supporting homeless people. Last week, the Ontario Superior Court of Justice decided that the Regional Municipality...

Source: NewCities Kirsten McRae, Communications & Marketing Manager, The Shift It’s in the news every day—people are forced to flee their homes in growing numbers due to circumstances beyond their control. According to the World Economic Forum, the number of people fleeing their homes has doubled in the last ten years and it’s predicted that more than...

Source: Urbanet By Kirsten McRae Echoes of the same story can be heard in cities across the globe – homelessness is on the rise and the cost of housing is increasing at an alarming rate while the availability of decent housing dwindles. Kirsten McRae with recent statistics on the global housing crisis and why we...

Source: Washington Post The global value of housing has surged 53% in four years, but the profits are literally at the expense of tenants.   By Leilani Farha and Fredrik Gertten Fredrik Gertten is a documentary filmmaker and Director of ‘Push’; Leilani Farha is the Global Director of The Shift and former UN Special Rapporteur...

Strategies must be adopted that protect affordable homes and insulate housing against speculative investors

Strategies must be adopted that protect affordable homes and insulate housing against speculative investors

A new documentary launching in the UK today (28 February), entitled Push, follows UN special rapporteur on the right to adequate housing Leilani Farha around the world as she attempts to make sense of the global housing crisis.

Around the globe, documentary finds, people are paying a high price as housing becomes the latest big investment commodity.

WE WATCHED IT, AND YOU SHOULD TOO. The 16th annual Reel Stories film festival is just around the corner and will feature four days of hand-picked, thought-provoking documentary films from all over the world.

A visiting United Nations representative has called New Zealand's housing crisis a "significant human rights crisis" and it's time the right to housing was wrenched from the hands of the private market.

New Zealand's housing crisis is "a violation of the promises" made by governments over the years according to the Human Rights Commissioner.

Special rapporteur says successive governments have contributed to what she called a ‘human rights crisis’.

"If you look at the logical extension of what’s going on, whether it’s a move-along law or one-way bus ticket, it’s 'let’s erase people, let’s render them invisible.'"