How corporate landlords are eroding affordable housing -- and prioritizing profits over human rights
Publisher |
The Conversation
Media Type |
audio
Publication Date |
Oct 19, 2023
Episode Duration |
00:37:45

Everybody knows it and almost everyone feels it: we’re in the grips of a major housing crisis. Home ownership is out of reach for so many people and for renters, units are hard to find and expensive. It seems everywhere you turn these days, there’s another rent strike. One of the factors driving this affordability crisis has been a shift away from publicly built housing toward large corporate-owned buildings. As Prof. Nemoy Lewis, from the School of Urban and Regional Planning at Toronto Metropolitan University, puts it: now “housing is treated as a commodity, rather than a human right.” He joins Vinita to discuss these corporate landlords and the disproportionate impact they are having on Black and low-income communities. He says it’s creating truly income-polarized cities – and urban centres that are increasingly accessible to only a small group of wealthy people.

One factor driving the housing crisis, across the country, is a shift away from publicly built housing toward large corporate-owned buildings where, as today’s guest Prof. Nemoy Lewis puts it, "housing is treated as a commodity, not a human right.”

Everybody knows it and almost everyone feels it: we’re in the grips of a major housing crisis. Home ownership is out of reach for so many people and for renters, units are hard to find and expensive. It seems everywhere you turn these days, there’s another rent strike. One of the factors driving this affordability crisis has been a shift away from publicly built housing toward large corporate-owned buildings. As Prof. Nemoy Lewis, from the School of Urban and Regional Planning at Toronto Metropolitan University, puts it: now “housing is treated as a commodity, rather than a human right.” He joins Vinita to discuss these corporate landlords and the disproportionate impact they are having on Black and low-income communities. He says it’s creating truly income-polarized cities – and urban centres that are increasingly accessible to only a small group of wealthy people.

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