PUSHBACK Talks

The Filmmaker and the Advocate are traveling again! While traveling to Palestine on a research trip at the invitation of the Norwegian Refugee Council, The Advocate was confronted with her family history and what her parents call "The Palestinian Heartache." Her trip through the villages of Area C of the Occupied Palestinian Territories left her focused on the hope of a future where the...

This week the Filmmaker and the Advocate sit down with Member of European Parliament and the woman behind ‘My Home is an Asset Class,’ Kim Van Sparrentak.  The EU Commission cannot make laws on housing, so Kim decided to write a report on all of the aspects where the European Union does have an influence on the housing market. While researching for the report, she came across Push the film and rea...

Leilani and Fredrik are back with a new live episode! More than 300 listeners joined live on Twitter Spaces to tell us how the housing crisis is manifesting in their corner of the world and how they are resisting. This time around we hear from listeners in El Salvador, Spain, England, and more.  Want to participate in the next live conversation with the Filmmaker and the Advocate? Be sure to follo...

After a long delay, PUSH the film is making its theatrical debut in Mexico! To celebrate, Fredrik and Leilani sit down with four experts, each involved with the right to housing in a different way, to discuss how the issues of financialization, housing policy, eviction, and more manifest in Mexico, from Guadalajara to Monterrey.  Andrés de la Peña , a journalist from Guadalajara talks about his in...

As economies in the global north continue to grow, housing exclusion grows alongside it, creating greater amounts of inequality. More than 160 million people in Europe are struggling to afford housing, with more than half that number living in poor-quality housing. How is this problem continuing to worsen in some of the wealthiest countries in the world?   Fredrik and Leilani sit down with Sorcha...

It’s no secret that big medicine is big business, but the pandemic has made the intellectual property of pharmaceutical companies one of the most valuable assets in the world. From vaccine politics to surprise billing and revenue-based medical care, privatization of healthcare around the world has enabled financial actors to exploit the global health crisis to turn a bigger profit.  This week we p...

Class is in session – In this two-part episode, the Filmmaker and the Advocate sit down with New York Times correspondent and author of powerful new book Davos Man: How the Billionaires Devoured the World , Peter S. Goodman, to learn about the handful of billionaires that are dramatically re-structuring the world as we know it.  In the two years since the pandemic began, the ten richest people on...

Did you know that real estate constitutes a whopping one-third of China’s massive economy? The property sector has been used to drive growth and most household wealth is held in real estate. As a result, for years developers like Evergrande have had access to cheap money, enabling them to become small Empires.   Recognizing that the situation was out of control, President Xi Jinping has used his &...

At the conclusion of COP26 – the United Nations Climate Summit - the international community was divided on the conference’s final outcomes. Coined “the most exclusionary climate summit to date”, advocates, activists and leaders of developing countries were enraged by the dominance of wealthy nations and the watering down of outcomes, to benefit the economies of some countries while damning the fu...

This week, Leilani and Fredrik are joined by listeners worldwide as part of their first-ever LIVE conversation on Twitter Spaces. We’ve all watched as the global housing crisis has reached a fever pitch in recent years; how has the right to housing struggle manifested in cities around the world? Listeners from Mexico, Vietnam, Canada, and more weigh in on the housing issues faced in their respecti...

Zimbabwe has a long and complex history of forced eviction, displacement, and demolition. Operation Move the Rubbish, a large-scale Zimbabwean government campaign to forcibly clear slum areas across the country, saw an estimated 700,000 people displaced, with millions more indirectly impacted. The country also struggles with land corruption; Zimbabwe scored 24 out of 100 on the 2020 Transparency I...

Housing in the Netherlands is under a lot of pressure. Housing costs are rapidly increasing and homelessness is on the rise. Residents of Rotterdam, the country’s second-largest city, are pushing back. More than 7,000 people took to the streets to protest unaffordable rents and real estate costs, and the shortage of affordable housing, particularly in Afrikaanderpark. The protest was one of many t...

On 3 October 2021, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalism (ICIJ) published the Pandora Papers, a roster of almost 12 million confidential files that had been leaked to the organization detailing the offshore financial dealings of hundreds of politicians, public officials, and celebrities. This type of controversial uncovering of finances is nothing new; similar leaks to the ICIJ...

In the span of just one year, Turkey has seen sharp increases in the cost of housing across the country, especially in neighborhoods near major universities. With the government’s neo-liberal policies inviting in huge amounts of foreign capital and the building of luxury housing to satisfy investor interests, the cost of rental accommodation has soared – increasing by 31% to as much as 290% depend...

In a landmark vote, 56.4% of Berliners backed a referendum for city government to take over ownership of approximately 240,000 apartments from corporate landlords. A groundbreaking referendum with incredible results has put all politicians in Germany at all levels on notice: the corporatization of housing is no longer acceptable. The question now - what happens next? Will the Mayor of Berlin devel...

Canada and Germany are having general elections later this month and the issue at the forefront of both is affordable housing. With growing movements around affordable housing in both countries, how are the parties’ housing platforms stacking up? The Filmmaker and the Advocate discuss the Berlin referendum that could have the government buying back property from large corporate landlords, before b...

It's summertime in Sweden and Canada. The Filmmaker and the Advocate are taking a break, but the podcast isn't.  For five weeks, Fredrik and Leilani bring their faithful fans and new listeners the PushBack Talks - Summer Series.  These are curated podcasts from Season 2 - episodes you may have missed that are definitely worth a listen. We've pared them down,  and updated each with r...

It's summertime in Sweden and Canada. The Filmmaker and the Advocate are taking a break, but the podcast isn't.  For five weeks, Fredrik and Leilani bring their faithful fans and new listeners the PushBack Talks - Summer Series.  These are curated podcasts from Season 2 - episodes you may have missed that are definitely worth a listen. We've pared them down,  and updated each with r...

It's summertime in Sweden and Canada. The Filmmaker and the Advocate are taking a break, but the podcast isn't.  For five weeks, Fredrik and Leilani bring their faithful fans and new listeners the PushBack Talks - Summer Series.  These are curated podcasts from Season 2 - episodes you may have missed that are definitely worth a listen. We've pared them down,  and updated each with r...

It's summertime in Sweden and Canada. The Filmmaker and the Advocate are taking a break, but the podcast isn't.  For five weeks, Fredrik and Leilani bring their faithful fans and new listeners the PushBack Talks - Summer Series.  These are curated podcasts from Season 2 - episodes you may have missed that are definitely worth a listen. We've pared them down,  and updated each with r...

It's summertime in Sweden and Canada. The Filmmaker and the Advocate are taking a break, but the podcast isn't.  For five weeks, Fredrik and Leilani bring their faithful fans and new listeners the PushBack Talks - Summer Series.  These are curated podcasts from Season 2 - episodes you may have missed that are definitely worth a listen. We've pared them down,  and updated each with r...

Canada, one of the ten wealthiest countries in the world, has an international reputation as a progressive place - where universal health care is guaranteed, marijuana is legal and same-sex marriage, a given. But the country’s most densely populated city – Toronto – is one of the most expensive on the planet. The financialization of housing is hitting Toronto hard, with affordable apartments being...

Summer! Time to kick-back and get away. With holidays on the agenda, The Filmmaker and the Advocate take a deeper dive into Air BnB and the short-term rental world. Joined by Professor of Urban Studies and Planning at University College London, Claire Colomb, Leilani and Fredrik discuss the rapid rise of Air BnB in 16 cities across Europe – going from zero presence in 2010 to 18,000 listings in Am...

On 28 June 2021, Jaime Palomera, a tenants union leader in  Barcelona and two tenants were brought to trial by the Public Prosecutor and now face three years imprisonment. Their crime?  Peacefully and successfully protesting violations of the tenants’ right to housing including exorbitant rent increases and uninhabitable housing conditions.   Dr. Zaida Muxi Martinez; architect, city planner, and a...

The Filmmaker and the Advocate continue their season two Zoom tour around the world. After a brief discussion on encampment evictions carried out across the City of Toronto, the two make a stop in New Zealand to interview Brennan Rigby of Shift Aoteara. New Zealand’s housing market has some interesting elements; the country’s real estate market has been closed to foreign investment since 2018, whi...