Leilani Farha, the global director of The Shift, an international human rights organization focused on housing, finance and climate, has spent years visiting homes around the world and witnessing the housing crisis up close. Her new book, Housing Inc.: A Global Takeover and Our Fight for Home, published as part of the 2026 CBC Massey Lectures and reckons with what she calls “a crisis four decades in the making.”

Housing is under attack, she argues, by politicians and corporations alike. 

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But the book is more than a critique. It is partly autobiographical. Told through vignettes of Farha’s own life and experience as the Lebanese-born United Nations special rapporteur on adequate housing from 2014 to 2020,  Housing Inc. takes a more personal approach.

In July, James Adair spoke with Farha about the stories behind the book, the financialization of housing and what it means to reclaim the idea of home. Housing Inc. will be released on Sept. 8.

James Adair: This book is very accessible. Why did you want to write for an audience that maybe isn’t traditionally thought of when it comes to housing or something like the Massey Lectures?

Leilani Farha: When I agreed to do the Massey Lectures and write the book, what I felt was not, “Oh yay me, this is a huge honour!” That came much later. 

What I felt was, “Oh my God, what an incredible opportunity” — the opportunity  to tell the story that I have seen unfold in city after city after city.

A lot of people in my travels would tell me that they feel really alone. They didn’t realize that what they were experiencing is part of this huge mega system, and so I wanted to expose that and help tenants, young people and people living in homelessness feel connected to each other. This requires the text to be accessible. 

As UN special rapporteur for housing for six years, I had the chance to speak to governments, to academics, to that world. With the Massey series, I really just wanted to speak with people experiencing the housing crisis.

JA: What do you think the public conversation in Canada around housing gets wrong?

LF: Well, first of all, who’s having the conversation — and who’s leading it? 

One of the things I hope I was successful in doing with this book was showing what a housing policy book looks like when it’s written by an Arab Canadian woman whose family history is one of colonialism and occupation in........

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