Corporate Capture of Housing and Human Rights

by Leilani Farha, UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Adequate Housing

Housing is at the centre of an historic structural transformation in global investment with profound consequences for human rights. Unprecedented amounts of global capital are now being parked in housing or acquired as security for financial instruments that are traded on global markets. Homeownership and rental have been rendered unaffordable for low or moderate income households in many cities, effectively displacing people out of their homes, communities and cities. Surprisingly, very little attention has been paid to the need for enhanced human rights accountability and remedies in relation to the activities of corporate
investors in housing.

Bio: In the role since 2014, Leilani Farha has presented reports to the UN on homelessness and the treatment of housing as a commodity and its consequences for people who are poor as well as the middle class. A lawyer by training, Farha has worked to advance the rights of poor and marginalized groups throughout her career.

She is the Executive Director of the NGO Canada Without Poverty and was instrumental in launching historic constitutional challenges to government inaction in the face of rising homelessness and to government restrictions on free expression of charities in Canada.