UN expert urges G20 to tackle global housing crisis

• “Collective amnesia” as to what started 2008 financial crisis
• Households are being evicted and priced-out of neighbourhoods
• G20 summit starts in Buenos Aires on 30 November

GENEVA (29 November 2018) – A UN expert has urged leaders of the world’s major economies meeting for the annual G20 summit to tackle the unresolved global housing crisis that is depriving millions of a basic human right.

“It seems that governments across the world are experiencing a collective amnesia as to what sparked the 2008 global financial crisis. In 10 years, the G20 leaders have yet to address the housing crisis that was at the heart of the financial crisis and that has only worsened since,” saidLeilani Farha,Special Rapporteur on adequate housing.

“One can hardly consider the world economy to be stable when millions of people in most G20 countries and elsewhere struggle to find and maintain an adequate and affordable place to live, and one quarter of the world’s urban population lives in informal settlements.”

She said economic instability was caused by a new global order which treated housing as a commodity and a financial instrument to park, grow and leverage capital.

“The G20 leaders must ensure that financial actors and their governments are prevented from selling-off the human right to housing to the highest bidder.”

The independent expert said rather than creating homes, housing is being built at the luxury end to satisfy investors – who of course have no intention of living there. Residential real estate was now the world’s largest business valued at an estimated US$163 trillion – more than twice the value of the world’s total GDP.

“Governments have actively encouraged – through tax structures, laws, policies and a lack of regulations – private financial actors to purchase large swathes of housing in ‘under-valued’ areas and to buy up foreclosed mortgages, affordable housing and even social housing stock. As a consequence, low-income and increasingly middle-income households are being evicted and priced-out of neighbourhoods,” Farha said.

The expert said apartments, flats and houses were not commodities like gold and oil.  “Housing is a human right which should be accessible to all,” she said. “Until it is understood as such, fair and sustainable development is unachievable. It is high time that world leaders acknowledge the financial crisis was a housing crisis, made worse over the past 10 years by the blind acceptance of the new economic order.”

ENDS

Ms Leilani Farha is the UN Special Rapporteur on adequate housing as a component of the right to an adequate standard of living, and on the right to non-discrimination in this context. She took up her mandate in June 2014. Ms Farha is the Executive Director of the NGO Canada without Poverty, based in Ottawa. A lawyer by training, for the past 20 years Ms Farha has worked both internationally and domestically on the implementation of the right to adequate housing for the most marginalized groups and on the situation of people living in poverty.

The Special Rapporteurs are part of what is known as the Special Procedures of the Human Rights Council. Special Procedures, the largest body of independent experts in the UN Human Rights system, is the general name of the Council’s independent fact-finding and monitoring mechanisms that address either specific country situations or thematic issues in all parts of the world. Special Procedures’ experts work on a voluntary basis; they are not UN staff and do not receive a salary for their work. They are independent from any government or organization and serve in their individual capacity.

For more information and media requests please contact: Madoka Saji at (+41 22 917 9636 / msaji@ohchr.org)

For media inquiries related to other UN independent experts: Jeremy Laurence – Media Unit (+ 41 22 917 9383 / jlaurence@ohchr.org)

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