Leilani Farha: “Governments should recognise housing as a basic human right”

Leilani Farha, UN special rapporteur on housing and human rights in 2014-2020, talks to Eteron about what is happening globally regarding the housing crisis, evictions, the efforts made in European cities – such as Berlin – to address this issue, as well as the difficult housing conditions in Greece.

Leilani Farha is an activist and the Global Director of SHIFT, a network that was created in 2020 and aims to empower renters’ movements around the world, in order to end homelessness, unaffordability, and evictions.
SHIFT challenges the omnipotence of investment funds and large financial institutions by reenforcing the legal arsenal of local or national governments with laws that protect the right to housing.

Additionally, along with the Swedish filmmaker Fredrik Gertten, they created a documentary called “Push” in 2019, where they show the housing crisis around the world. From Barcelona to Berlin, Toronto and Seoul, Gertten and Farha research the rapid increase in real estate values and how that pushes residents out of their hometowns. A documentary about how housing is being turned into a commodity and how many groups of citizens rise up in order to claim something that should be a given.