OTTAWA, ON, June 8, 2026 /CNW/ - Leilani Farha, Global Director of The Shift and former UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Adequate Housing, has been named the 2026 Massey Lecturer. The lecture series that will take her across Canada in September and October will draw from her forthcoming book, Housing, Inc.: A Global Takeover and Our Fight for Home, to be published this fall by Anansi Press.

As one of the world's leading housing rights advocates, Farha argues that while the global housing crisis was purpose-built — by an alliance of governments, banks, and financial firms — it can be dismantled.

Housing, Inc. exposes four decades of policy choices that transformed homes into financial assets and priced out a generation. From a car in San Diego to a lean-to in Lagos, a motel room in Paris to a tent on a Toronto beach, Farha traces how the same logic that dispossessed Indigenous Peoples of their lands now displaces tenants and destroys communities.

Farha said, "Tenants and people experiencing homelessness are being sacrificed — driven out of their homes, while financial firms, backed by governments, watch their profits soar. It has never been clearer who counts in this world and who doesn't. This is not just a housing crisis. It is a crisis of humanity, and of democracy itself."

The book does not stop at a diagnosis. Farha argues that fixing the housing crisis requires more than better policy. It requires a reckoning.

"We keep treating this as a market problem with a market solution," said Julieta Perucca, Co-Founder and Deputy Director of The Shift. "Leilani's book makes the case that it's a problem of ideology — and that communities, not financial firms, need to be driving the answers."

"Governments, banks, and financial firms have built a longstanding alliance — they are Housing Inc. They are powerful, and they move as one. But we can take housing back if we connect, collaborate, and fight together in the name of home."

To that end, Farha and The Shift will be launching a national campaign in September to challenge who holds power and influence over housing in Canada. Farha will deliver the 2026 Massey Lectures across Canada in September and October. Housing, Inc. will be available wherever books are sold.

SOURCE The Shift