Push: the Questions

Above are a few of the comments of audience members after viewing Push: The Film at Earth’s Refillery Coop on March 3. A small but engaged group of citizens gathered to learn about the financialization of housing and how large corporations are buying up significant portions of rental properties around the world. You can see more about the film at its website here.  

Dr. Joshua Evans, Associate Professor at the University of Alberta and Chair of ECOHH’s Policy and Communications Committee, presented more information about financialization of housing in Edmonton, and how the affordability of housing in Edmonton is being affected. You can see more about his research into financialization of housing in Canada and Edmonton here. If you want to know more about this topic, please contact ECOHH.

And here's a list of other comments and questions from the evening:

• Is housing embedded into the fiduciary responsibilities of pension funds.

• Will the housing market crash? How long will that take?

• Capitalism is Extractive.

• (In places where financialized housing has taken over.) The community itself has evaporated. Empty. Dead.

• How are companies able to get away with keeping empty apartment buildings for years?

• The elite feel free to violate basic laws and then are surprised by the reaction.

• Politicians delegate responsibility for housing to the experts – who are the developers and financial sector!

• Corporations pull the money out of the community where it should be circulating around it.

• Economic policy without morality.

• It doesn’t matter where pension funds are invested as long as there’s good returns!?

• The film mentioned hundreds of properties empty in London owned for investment. What are the numbers in Canada?

• Is the situation worse or better than it was in 2019?

• The only way to get through this is to talk about it on a human scale.

• Dark empty buildings still make money…

• Financialization means owning a home only as a means to make money.

• Housing is different from other commodities – housing is a human right.