From financialised to human rights-based housing

Large, institutional investors or ‘corporate landlords’ have a growing footprint in our cities. Investment firms seek to purchase multiple housing units and then rent them out to make a profit. They view houses not as homes, but as money-making machines. Stable investments instead of a human right.

Corporate landlords are concentrated in Europe’s big cities – from Paris to Berlin, Madrid, Amsterdam, Dublin, and Copenhagen. Over the past decades, institutional landlords have, for example, minted EUR 40bn of Berlin’s houses into assets they rent out. Blackstone owns more than 40,000 homes in Spain. Investors also have a growing footprint in smaller towns.

What can be done to slow down this rapidly growing trend and help our towns and cities defend the right to housing?

Join us for a European Parliament screening of the documentary, PUSH. The award-winning documentary from director Fredrik Gertten sheds light on the global phenomenon of the commodification of housing and follows the real-life stories of those living through the housing crisis all over the world.

After the screening, former UN Special Rapporteur on Housing and Director of The Shift Leilani Farha will launch The Shift Directives on the financialisation of housing. The Shift Directives are the first-ever comprehensive framework providing governments and investors with guidance to effectively address the financialisation of housing in accordance with human rights law. The screening will be followed by a panel debate on latest trends in the housing affordability crisis and Europe’s role in (solving) this, with Leilani Farha, Greens/EFA MEPs Kim van Sparrentak, Ernest Urtasun, Housing Europe director Sorcha Edwards, and Tommy De Temmerman, Member of the Cabinet of EU Commissioner McGuinness.

Refreshments will be included.

#Right2Housing #homesforpeoplenotprofit

Registration 

You can either attend in person in the European Parliament or register to follow the event online.

The programme

15:00 - 15:15 Walk-in/coffee 

15:15 - 15:30 Welcome and intro from Greens/EFA MEP Mounir Satouri, short exchange with tenant movement representative, followed by video introduction from Fredrik Gertten, director 

15:30-17:00 Screening of PUSH 

Short break 

17:15 - 18:15 Global launch of The Shift Directives on the financialisation of housing by Leilani Farha, director of The Shift.
Panel discussion and Q&A with Leilani Farha, Sorcha Edwards, Housing Europe, Greens/EFA MEPs Ernest Urtasun, Kim van Sparrentak, and Tommy De Temmerman, Member of the Cabinet of EU Commissioner McGuinness

18:15 - 18:30 Conclusions 

18:30 - 19:30 Drinks and networking

Further information 

-> Read the Greens/EFA study and background documents.  
-> Read our blog: Who (really) owns your city? How corporate landlords are using homes to make money