PUSHBACK Talks

What is wrong with Sweden? the Advocate asks the Filmmaker. The country is in political turmoil - in a fight about market rents that brought the government down this week.   The final straw that caused Sweden’s Left Party to call for vote of confidence, was Prime Minister Lofven’s decision to sell-out tenants and support a proposal to abolish rent control on newly built properties.  Leilani and Fr...

This week, the Filmmaker and the Advocate are in conversation with Gert Jan Bakker of WOON.  Amsterdam used to have strong rent control policies that protected tenants. But a neo-liberal government changed all that - selling off social housing stock to private corporations, and favoring landlords over tenants, and allowing rents to increase drastically.  Apartments that once rented for 600 euros a...

The Filmmaker & the Advocate call on an old friend in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Raquel Rolnik is a world-leading writer, academic, and head of the Design & Planning program at the University of Sao Paulo. Raquel was Leilani Farha's predecessor as UN Special Rapporteur on the right to adequate housing (2008-2014) and remains a strong voice in the global conversation. She recently published a...

The Filmmaker and the Advocate are taken on a tour of exciting developments in France — community land trusts, new social housing and a newly minted housing Brigaid taking on Airbnb and landlords who don’t follow the law.  Marc Uhry, one of France’s leading housing activists has moved from advocate to implementor of his own ideas, now as councillor and close adviser to the Mayor of the small city...

California–known to the world as the home of Hollywood stars, relaxed beach vibes, and…the location of 25% of the homeless population in the US. After an emotional introduction about the conflict between Israel and Palestine, and an update on how the billionaires in the world are faring, the Filmmaker and the Advocate sit down with Pete White, founder & Executive Director of Los Angeles Commun...

This week, Puerto Rico’s Ariadna Godreau Aubert – founder & executive director of Ayuda Legal Puerto Rico, human rights lawyer, and activist – joins the Filmmaker and the Advocate to discuss the ways Puerto Rico’s status as an unincorporated territory of the U.S. impacts the human right to housing and access to justice. Five years before Hurricane Maria, laws were put in place to encourage inv...

A year later than originally planned, Fredrik is finally in Zagreb to screen Push the film across the country! The Filmmaker and the Advocate seize the opportunity to take the podcast on the road. In conversation with architect and activist Iva Marčetić, Fredrik and Leilani discuss the unique situation in Croatia, where the government is the biggest landlord in the country but owns just 2% of the...

In the wake of the Lebanese civil war, post-war reconstruction was built around the idea that the market would fix everything. But as investors flocked into Beirut the cost of housing skyrocketed, pushing long-time residents out of the city they had fought for. Over time, architecture and heritage were lost as neighborhoods slowly emptied of residents and businesses. The Filmmaker and the Advocate...

After more than a decade of austerity measures, recession, and unemployment, Athens has seen a big shift in the makeup of homeownership, a shift that comes at the expense of residents and that benefits big business. In a country where homeownership has historically been high, more and more properties have gone into foreclosure and been sold to nameless buyers as a result of Greece’s financial cris...

It was a radical experiment – impose a rent cap on apartments in Berlin so that tenants wouldn’t be priced out of the city by the big money actors moving in. It was challenged in the courts by Members of Parliament – litigation supported by a lobby of institutional landlords. On 15 April 2021, the highest court in Germany struck down the rent cap, ruling that the Berlin state government had exceed...

It’s a family affair this week as the Filmmaker and the Advocate are joined by The Shift team and PUSHBACK Talk supporters to try out the popular new app Clubhouse. The episode exposes what it takes for a small (but mighty) team of six to pursue The Shift’s goal: to build a global movement to secure the right to housing. The discussion turns to a brainstorming of future themes and guests for the p...

The Filmmaker and the Advocate take listeners of this episode of PUSHBACK Talks into the real world – one where $$ money $$ is the principle value and corruption and kleptocracy the means of acquisition. Few are better placed to expose the workings of corruption than Sarah Chayes – former NPR reporter, and senior adviser to government officials in the US Department of Defence, and author of three...

Executive Vice President of the European Commission, Frans Timmermans, joins the Filmmaker and the Advocate in a frank discussion of the current housing crisis in the EU that is often overlooked and overshadowed. Mr. Timmermans reflects on the mistakes that were made along the way to cause the crisis, recognizing that the Social Democrats' commitment to Thatcher-Reagan neoliberalism, the mark...

PUSH-The Film exposed the global pattern: cities have become the domain of the wealthy or at least a deposit box for their wealth – and everyday people are being pushed out. Nowhere is this more true than in South Africa, named by Time Magazine as one of the world’s most unequal places on earth. In this episode the Filmmaker and the Advocate are joined by Mandisa Shandu, lawyer and activist with N...

The Filmmaker and the Advocate bring you an exclusive conversation with Denmark’s Housing Minister – Kaare Dybvad Bek – one of the few politicians in the world to have had the courage to take on Blackstone and other institutional investors. The Minister recounts the new housing reality in Copenhagen where private equity, pension funds and asset management firms have started to dominate, imposing o...

Most of us put our savings in a bank. But what does the bank do with our money? What if you learned that your life savings were being invested in companies that are burning down the Amazon forest or raising rents and evicting tenants from their homes? Would you care? Would you be willing to do something about it?  This week the Filmmaker and the Advocate talk with Jakob König the Project Leader of...

This week,  Dublin’s Rory Hearne –  author, podcaster, housing campaigner and university lecturer – joins the Filmmaker and The Advocate to explore how big capital came to dominate such a small nation.   The impact of the Global Financial Crisis in ’08 was particularly severe in Ireland, triggering a recession, a huge drop in GDP, high unemployment, and housing precarity. The government’s response...

They're back. After a few months of living the pandemic lifestyle, the Filmmaker and the Advocate have reunited for an inspirational Season 2. This first episode checks in on the Monsters who hang with each other and play monopoly with our homes – Blackstone, Akelius and Oatly. The co-hosts provide news on the many ways and the many places that tenants and governments are ramping up their eff...

In this concluding episode of 2020 – the Filmmaker and the Advocate go back to the cities where PUSH-The film has travelled and successfully helped to push back  against financialization – from its World Premiere in Copenhagen, to its North American debut in Toronto and a whole lot of places in between and thereafter. Leilani and Fredrik reflect on what they’ve learned about the necessary ingredie...

Nicholas Burton, his wife and his dog were living on the 19th floor of the Grenfell Tower in June 2017, when the fire struck. Nicholas survived, but his wife and dog did not. He’s been fighting ever since to ensure that the outcome of the fire is justice for the survivors and that his community can remain in Notting Hill, one of the most sought after neighbourhoods  in the world. The Filmmaker int...

The fire that destroyed the Grenfell Tower in Kensington Chelsea, London in June 2017 stunned the world. Located in the richest Borough in the world, Grenfell was a symbol of all that has gone wrong in housing for lower-income people. The Filmmaker and the Advocate speak with Grenfell survivor, Nicholas Burton, a character in PUSH who lived on the 20th floor of the building and who lost not just h...

You know her from PUSH as assistant to the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to housing, but she’s come a long way since then! The Filmmaker and The Advocate welcome Julieta Perucca to the show in a warm post–PUSH reunion. She’s now a young leader making change around the world in her own right as the Deputy Director of The Shift . Fredrik and Leilani discuss Julieta's trajectory since the U...

The Filmmaker and the Advocate are joined by extra special guests from Port Harcourt Nigeria – Chicoco Radio , made up of rappers and mappers, musicians, journalists, filmmakers and photographers. Together they discuss the harsh inequalities experienced in Africa's largest nation, particularly in the oil-producing Delta Coast – where erasure of communities and extremely violent forced evictio...

Berlin - known for its hip vibe and affordable rents - has become one of the most sought after places to live amongst young urbanites and creatives. Those affordable rents, however, have also drawn institutional investors and asset management firms like Blackstone and Heimstaden, who are buying up mass amounts of affordable apartments with a view to reaping huge profits by increasing rents. But Be...

Since the Global Financial Crisis in 2008, Spain has been ground zero for the financialization of housing. Blackstone, Cerberus and other institutional investors have plundered the social housing stock and gobbled up affordable homes. The Filmmaker and the Advocate are joined by Jaime Palomera Zaidel, founder and member of a tenants union and lecturer at the University of Barcelona. Jaime talks ab...