The Vulture Ate My Student Housing

Students the world over head to university filled with hopes and dreams for the future. But to pursue those dreams requires secure housing and that’s where the nightmare begins. The co-hosts swap stories of student life in London, Lagos, Dublin, Seoul and Toronto. Students are working multiple jobs to pay the rent, lobbying for the right to sleep in their cars, experiencing sexual coercion, spending hours commuting back and forth each day and worrying about the debt they’re accruing. Just when they should be stepping into the world with energy and strength, they are being beaten down. Lower income students have less time to study and are leaving university with crippling debt loads, creating new patterns of inequality.  The Filmmaker and the Advocate discuss one of the central drivers of these conditions: student housing has become one of the hottest commodities around. It's being scooped up by  global vulture funds including … you guessed it … Blackstone. This episode will make you angry and should make all of us want to pushback so young people can dream again. Produced by WG Film Recorded & Edited by Mikey JonesMusic by Florencia Di ConcilioSocial Media & Support Team - Louise Gustafsson, Maja Moberg & Melinda BergstrandSupport the show

Om Podcasten

Cities are becoming increasingly unliveable for most people. Costs are rising but incomes are not. Sky-high rents, evictions, homelessness, and substandard housing are common realities for urban dwellers across the planet. There is a global housing crisis. How did this basic human right get so lost? Who is pushing people out of their homes and cities, and what’s being done to pushback? 

On the heels of the release of the award-winning documentary, PUSH, filmmaker, Fredrik Gertten and Leilani Farha, the former UN Special Rapporteur on the right to housing, have reconvened. Join the filmmaker and the advocate as they reflect on their experiences making PUSH and exchange ideas and stories about the film's central issue: the financialization of housing and its fall-out. 

For more about PUSH and to view it:  www.pushthefilm.com 

For more about Fredrik Gertten and his other films: www.wgfilm.com

For more about Leilani Farha in her new role, Global Director of The Shift: www.make-the-shift.org