Ideas - Confronting 'Housing Inc.' | Meet the 2026 CBC Massey Lecturer

Episode Date: June 8, 2026

Our homes have been stripped of their essential humanity, says Leilani Farha, this year's CBC Massey Lecturer. Today housing has become a commodity — one fuelling the biggest industry in the world. In her lectures, Housing Inc.: A Global Takeover and Our Fight for Home, Farha calls on all of us to envision a new ideology for home — one rooted in dignity, humanity and law. “Home is required for human existence," says Farha, who served as a UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Housing from 2014 to 2020 and is now the global director of The Shift. She speaks with Nahlah Ayed about her 25 years fighting for housing as a human right, the conversation she hopes her Massey lectures will spark and why "home is really everything."

This is a CBC podcast. Welcome to Ideas. I'm Nala Ayyed, and I'm here to introduce you to our 2026 CBC Massey lecturer, Lelani Farha. She's visited hundreds of people in their homes across six continents to investigate the state of housing worldwide, people living in homeless encampments and informal settlements, tenants and homeowners. She spent six years as the UN's special rapporteurs. Tour on the Right to Housing. And today, she's the global director of The Shift, an international human rights organization focused on housing, finance, and climate. Her lectures are titled Housing Inc. A global takeover and our fight for home. Welcome, Leilani, and congratulations. Thank you so much, Nala, and it's lovely to be here. Thank you for coming in. Let me start

with that title. What is Housing Inc? So Housing, Housing, Inc. refers to the alliance of actors that are controlling our housing sector. So we're talking about private actors like financial firms, asset management companies, pension funds, as well as governments and banks. And together, this alliance has turned housing, our homes, into a commodity, an asset class. and quite frankly, the biggest business in the world. What does it mean to turn our homes and housing into commodity? How does that affect us?

Well, I think most of us understand the role that home plays in our lives. It's kind of everything, right? So essential to existence and well-being. So if you tamper with that, if you create instability, then you are potentially upsetting everything. And that's what we're seeing right now. People are really struggling. So if you look at tenants and the instability they face,

whether it's because they're fearful that their building is going to be purchased by one of these private actors and their rent is going to go up, they're experiencing anxiety. You look at young people who can't get into the housing market, all. I mean, they can't get into the rental sector, let alone home ownership. And they're getting depressed. They're having to live with their families. They're having to postpone their futures. You look at people living in homelessness and, well, of course, they are living the hardest life struggling for dignity and to just stay alive. So a housing system or a housing industry

that is broken, has huge ramifications. And I would say, Nala, beyond the personal ramifications, there are societal ramifications as well, really important ones. Like what? Well, in my analysis, I think we're seeing a real erosion of democracy itself. And I say that because these actors that I'm talking about, and they're a line. with governments and banks means that they really are controlling the decision-making around housing. They have a seat at the political table. They are consulting with governments. They are the ones

driving so much of our housing policy and law, including taxation law. And it means that everyday people are being pushed out of the conversation, out of the ability to change laws and policies that are so deeply affecting them. And so we see this real erosion of democratic participation by tenants, by people living in homelessness. Your lectures are about so much more than just the mechanics of housing. Can you just provide us an overview, a little glimpse on what else you tackle in your lectures? Sure.

I mean, the book really is about home in many senses and what home means to us and how necessary it is for our existence. It talks a lot about how home has been turned into a commodity, an asset class. And at its heart is really the idea of how home is about power relations. It's been turned into a power struggle. And it is very revealing of who counts in this world and who counts in this world and who Who doesn't? I mean, look at what happens when financial firms move in and purchase apartment buildings, for example. Their business model is to reposition that building into more luxury accommodations. And what they do, what they say, the language that they use is quite chilling, actually. They say they want to remove legacy tenants and replace them with better quality tenants. They've even used the language of rolling tenants.

And so from this, how can we understand that language, but to understand that this is as much about how certain people are viewed. This is about people and our understanding of people. It's not about the built environment. You spent six years as the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Housing. What does the right to housing, according to, to international law actually promise us? Yeah, what I find so appealing about human rights,

and it's not just because I'm a human rights lawyer, is that it really returns us to human beings. I mean, that's why they're called human rights, right? They're about human beings and about dignity. And they require a focus on human well-being. And the right to housing itself is very much about human dignity. it's the right to live in peace, security, and dignity. That's how it's defined.

And so I love just that aspect because what we've seen with the housing industry is that we are getting really far away from people and from humanity. And human rights pulls us right back there. So that's amazing. That's ideological. But human rights are also incredibly practical. And the right to housing is probably one of the most practical rights. I mean, it's not just the right to housing, it's the right to adequate housing. And that's actually defined in international law. So there are standards that have to be met like affordability and habitability and cultural appropriateness. So that's really very useful. There's also standards around what governments have to do, how they spend their resources, what the outcomes should be. And there are built-in accountability mechanisms, which is super important if we're ever going to make progress. So I see human rights as both useful on the kind of more ideological or

philosophical side, but also incredibly practical. Leilani, I was just to end off here, I was curious what it was like for you to get the phone call that you were going to be this year's Massey lecturer. It was incredibly emotional. I'm not going to lie. I cried. And I don't know if if it would be understood why I cried, it was, the idea of the honor of it, the gravity of it, came much later. I think the tears were shed because it was a vote of confidence in the idea of housing as a human right, that there's something meaningful to be said, and that maybe I am a good person to say it.

and it came at a time when I was feeling pretty isolated for a whole bunch of reasons, which we don't need to get into, but just isolated in my work. And it just came at the right time. And such a gift to be given an opportunity to reflect and write. I mean, it's been a labor of love, I have to say that. I cannot wait to hear you deliver these lectures.

Thank you so much, Lailani. Thanks, Nala. Go to cBC.ca slash podcasts.