In the summer of 2021, I visited a homeless community in a park in Toronto, Canada, and spoke to one of the residents. He was living in a tent in the shadow of brand new skyscrapers, and had been homeless for about five years. At one point he swivelled around, pointed up at a crane on the skyline, and said: “Who are they building those for?
Definitely not for me.” He was right. And he captured something experienced by ordinary people around the world: the growing conviction that the housing system is no longer tethered to their needs. What he was pointing at is not just a housing crisis.
It is a crisis of democracy. Democracy promises that our living conditions are shaped by all of us, regardless of our station in life. Yet decisions about housing have been systematically removed from democratic control and handed to financial actors such as private equity firms, pension funds and real-estate investment trusts.
Working hand in hand with governments and banks, these actors have decoupled the price of housing from what ordinary people earn. They’ve transformed our homes into a toy for wealthy investors. I call this alliance Housing Inc.
The tools available to the large financial actors driving and profiting from the housing crisis are not available to the rest of us. They hire armies of lobbyists to squash rent-control laws. They fund political campaigns.
They rotate in and out of government positions. They are in the rooms and hallways where decisions are made. Even governments trying to fight the growing influence of the financial sector in housing face intense pressure.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
