Urban Warfare: Housing Injustice & Grassroots Struggle (Livestreamed)

The power of the real estate-financial complex has grown so significant in the past decades that it now imperils not only the right to adequate housing but humanity’s very survival on this planet. Join NYC-DSA, Verso Books, and others for a discussion of how real estate has colonized the world, provoking mass displacement, poverty, and environmental destruction, and how working people can fight back to win decent housing and a liveable future for all.

Unaffordable rents, a homelessness epidemic, and decaying public housing are the present reality of American cities, and the US is no exception in this regard. In her recent book Urban Warfare: Housing Under the Empire of Finance, to be presented for the first time in New York at this event, Raquel Rolnik of the University of São Paulo, a former planning official in Brazil and former UN Special Rapporteur on Adequate Housing, tells the story of how finance reoriented housing from a social policy objective to a business opportunity. While the profit-driven model of housing marches toward a new crisis, social movements all over the world are waging a common struggle for housing justice.

Dr. Rolnik will discuss these topics with Daniel Aldana-Cohen, co-author of A Planet to Win, Why We Need a Green New Deal and Director of the Socio-Spatial Climate Collaborative at the University of Pennsylvania, who will discuss why a global Green New Deal is necessary and how it can empower both housing and climate activists. With presidential candidates like Bernie Sanders supporting activist demands for a Homes Guarantee and a Green New Deal, Housing Justice for All campaign coordinator Cea Weaver will moderate a discussion on what it will take to achieve such transformational change.