‘Push’ & Pull

NEW DOCUMENTARY SPOTLIGHTS WHAT MANY DON’T KNOW ABOUT THE GLOBAL AFFORDABLE HOUSING CRISIS

BY JOE NOLAN Film Critic

Director Fredrik Gertten opens Push with a cigar-smoking realtor staging a home. In markets like Nashville, where rent is skyrocketing and home buying has become a full contact sport, it’s a sight we’re all familiar with. But Push isn’t a documentary examining what most of us know about real estate. Push is an exorcism of the invisible forces that undermine the human right to housing for all but the elite.

The film follows Leilani Farha from Barcelona to Berlin, Toronto, New York, Los Angeles, London and San Francisco. Farha is the United Nations Rapporteur on Adequate Housing. She’s examining the problem of inadequate/unaffordable housing in metropolitan areas around the globe, and working with experts and politicians in different cities to explore what the problem is, why it’s happening, and how it might be solved.

In the movie’s press release Gertten observes that “Blaming a coffee shop or an art gallery for pushing out the poor is just silly. There are other — much stronger forces in action.” Gerten and Farha reveal those forces in chats with rent strikers in Toronto where in the past three decades housing prices have risen more than three times faster than wages. The filmmakers also profile places like London’s Notting Hill district of North London, which flourished after the world wide success of the eponymous 1999 romantic comedy drew tourism, celebrities and investors. The result was a wave of hyper-affluence even as low income high rises burned-up in deadly fires for lack of basic maintenance.

Push’s central theme is that traditional gentrification is not to blame for this current crisis. Push posits that the crisis is much deeper and further reaching than mainstream conversations about affordable housing acknowledge. The transformation of real estate into financial assets subject to the whims of speculation and hyper trading has undermined the stability of actual housing resources for real people. Residential buildings are being bought and built so that securities can be created sold and traded. Renters and homeowners don’t necessarily have a place in the equation other than creating the demand that raises values of the properties and their assets.

The results are dead zones where empty luxury buildings replace shops, small businesses — even hospitals – which can be crucial resources to longtime neighborhood communities. To the uninitiated the vacant luxury dwelling look a developer investment gone bad, but that’s usually not the case. When an empty luxury condominium replaces a grocery or a number of local small businesses housing is not increased for the people in that community who can’t afford to live there. The building and the land are being treated like a valuable asset that can be bought and sold precisely because it is empty and there are no pesky occupants demanding their legal rights as renters with leases. We see an empty building, but we don’t see the security asset that represents the building being invested in and traded over and over in seconds in the invisible marketplace of digital high-speed finance.

Push doesn’t argue that capitalism is problematic in and of itself. But it does argue that capitalism run wild in a space where housing is treated as a commodity — like gold — is a problem. As Farha says, “Gold isn’t a human right. Adequate housing is.” Push is a common sense reminder that societies undermine their own foundations when sectors like education, health care, law enforcement and housing are profit-driven instead of people driven. Again, Farha says it best, “Who’s going to live in cities? Who are cities for? People need a few things to have a dignified life. Housing is one of those things.”

Find a virtual screening for Push at http:// www.pushthefilm.com/us-events/

Joe Nolan is a critic, columnist and performing singer/ songwriter based in East Nashville. Find out more about his projects at www.joenolan.com.