Housing documentary 'Push' & the UN Special Rapporteur on Adequate Housing

On Wednesday I attended the screening Fredrik Gertten’s 2019 documentary Push, which follows UN Special Rapporteur on Adequate Housing Leilani Farha as she gathers information on the deepening global crisis in housing affordability. The bulk of the film sees Farha talking to social housing residents around the world (Canada, US, Chile, Sweden, Italy, England, South Korea) about their increasingly precarious position as megacorporations snap up privatised social housing portfolios and either sweat the assets to run down the facilities enough to force them out, or refurbish the properties so they can raise the rents beyond their ability to pay.

Farha stresses the role of international finance as pivotal in the shift from housing as a right and a social necessity, to housing as an asset with huge potential gains if the wellbeing of the occupants can be partially or completely disregarded. Joseph Stiglitz in particular offers useful explanations on this theme as one of the film’s range of talking heads, and two London stories in particular illustrate it further. In Fitzrovia in London’s stratospherically expensive central west, Farha takes a tour of the ghost neighbourhoods largely owned by offshore owners as real estate investments, which now have almost no actual inhabitants. And she speaks to an eloquent survivor of the Grenfell Tower fire, who is grappling with the aftermath of the disaster and his inability to afford to remain in Notting Hill, his home of 20 years.

There were plenty of similar stories about financiers’ preferences for luxury accommodation investments skewing real estate markets and persuading local governments to prioritise the interests of developers over the interests of working-class and middle-class communities, who increasingly find themselves unable to afford to live in the cities they work in.

While the documentary doesn’t present swift solutions, and rather peters out into a UN presentation by Farha, it’s still a worthwhile addition to the housing debate. For other useful contributions on this topic, see Urbanized (dir. Gary Hustwit, 2011), The Human Scale (dir. Andreas Dalsgaard, 2012) and Capital in the 21st Century (dir. Justin Pemberton, 2019). And, for local readers, note that Farhani will shortly make her final fact-finding visit of her UN mandate to New Zealand (10-19 February). Her statement includes:

At the end of the visit, the Special Rapporteur will hold a press conference to share her preliminary findings and recommendations at 13:00 on 19 February 2020, at UNICEF New Zealand, Level 1, PSA House, 11 Aurora Terrace, Wellington. Access will be strictly limited to journalists. The press conference will also be streamed live.