Where should we live somewhere ? The issue has been chasing me all my adult life. Without a rich family or permanent employment, I will continue to sleep in temporary addresses until I die on someone else's couch. Me, the rest of my generation and our children.
About this is the Swedish filmmaker Fredrik Gertten's new documentary Push, today's hyper-capitalist housing market that has created a global crisis.
You usually talk about gentrification when hipsters with whiter skin move into a poor area, as the local cafes are replaced by Starbucks and people are soon forced to relocate to make room for a richer class. But in London, entire areas that used to be live meeting places have been turned into small ghost towns because no one can afford to live there. And that's the whole point. The buildings are a more profitable investment if they remain empty.
Gertten, who previously exposed Banan giant Dole's dirty working conditions in Bananas! * (2009) and the alarming trend where urban planning adapts to car driving in Bikes vs cars (2015), with Push sets the sights of multinational players like Blackstone - our new landlords who, thanks to stagnant wage developments and an unregulated market, have been able to buy up real estate around the world, drive up rents and force people out on the street.
A big thank you to those in power, not least in Sweden, who let huge capital funds take over the housing market. It is almost impressive how easy it is to blow one's citizens.
Gertten does not see much herself in Push, but follows Leilani Farha, the UN's specialist in the right to housing. She is strangely surprised that huge multinational corporations are shit in human rights, and with the foolishness of a fool tries to convince the authorities of the crisis situation. Nobody listens to her. In a tragic scene, she delivers a fire speech in front of UN delegates who sleepily scroll through their phones and couldn't care less.
Farha travels around the world and visits Berlin, Uppsala and London, where a large number of properties are bought by capital funds or oil princes. Gertten and Farha meet survivors of the fire in the Grenfell high-rise building in London, an area in change where the rich are in need away from those with lower incomes. Not completely unprepared, those who have survived the fire (from the poor side) must find new housing on their own. Elsewhere in the country if needed. Farha meets people who occupy buildings, an act of resistance that seems inevitable if development continues in the same direction.
They also interview Italian Gomorrah writer Roberto Saviano, who explains how money from organized crime is mixed with capital from the global housing market in tax havens. Money from trafficking, drug trafficking and murder is washed and injected back into our communities through the real estate giants but becomes impossible to trace.
Push is a global concern, but for a Swede it will be the most fierce when Farha visits Uppsala and Stockholm, where she is amazed at how Swedish politicians have allowed Blackstone to buy real estate, even though we previously had such strong protection of the right to housing.
"It is not realistic to buy something back," replies Fredrik Jurdell, district director, when Farha presses him.
Towards the end of Push comes a streak of hope, when Farha's entrance is finally heard.
Still, it's hard to be optimistic. The bigger question in Push is: "Who has the right to live in a city?" Gertten shows most clearly that the housing crisis requires radical measures if cities are to continue to function as meeting places.