Housing has become a crisis of humanity—one created by design and decades in the making.
Leilani Farha has been in more homes than most people will ever visit—a four-door sedan in San Diego, a lean-to by railway tracks in Lagos, a windowless motel room in Paris, a tent on a Toronto beach. What people tell her first is never that they need housing, it’s that they want to be treated like human beings. Housing Inc. explains why they have to ask.
Writing from the centre of global housing debates, Farha reckons with a crisis four decades in the making, engineered by dictators, presidents, and prime ministers, and perfected by the financial firms that turn homes into sites of extraction. The same logic that justifies dispossessing Indigenous Peoples of their lands and resources now prices out a generation, displaces tenants, destroys communities, and disappears homeless people.
This crisis of humanity plays out in every country in the world. With fierce clarity, Farha argues that the fight for home requires not just better policy, but a different ideology altogether—one rooted in law, humanity, and imagination—where every person counts.
Housing has become a crisis of humanity—one created by design and decades in the making.
Leilani Farha has been in more homes than most people will ever visit—a four-door sedan in San Diego, a lean-to by railway tracks in Lagos, a windowless motel room in Paris, a tent on a Toronto beach. What people tell her first is never that they need housing, it’s that they want to be treated like human beings. Housing Inc. explains why they have to ask.
Writing from the centre of global housing debates, Farha reckons with a crisis four decades in the making, engineered by dictators, presidents, and prime ministers, and perfected by the financial firms that turn homes into sites of extraction. The same logic that justifies dispossessing Indigenous Peoples of their lands and resources now prices out a generation, displaces tenants, destroys communities, and disappears homeless people.
This crisis of humanity plays out in every country in the world. With fierce clarity, Farha argues that the fight for home requires not just better policy, but a different ideology altogether—one rooted in law, humanity, and imagination—where every person counts.
| Published By | House of Anansi Press Inc — Sep 8, 2026 |
| Specifications | 288 pages | 5 in x 8 in |
| Written By |
LEILANI FARHA is Global Director of The Shift, an international human rights organization focused on housing, finance, and climate. She was UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Housing and is a world expert on human rights and housing. She has visited hundreds of people in their homes worldwide and engages with activists and decision makers at all levels. Leilani is a lawyer, an advocate, and a dreamer who works with anyone interested in creating a just world. She lives in Ottawa, Canada. |
| Written By |
|
LEILANI FARHA is Global Director of The Shift, an international human rights organization focused on housing, finance, and climate. She was UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Housing and is a world expert on human rights and housing. She has visited hundreds of people in their homes worldwide and engages with activists and decision makers at all levels. Leilani is a lawyer, an advocate, and a dreamer who works with anyone interested in creating a just world. She lives in Ottawa, Canada. |