Housing, Inc: A Global Takeover and Our Fight for Home
- Date
- September 10, 2026
- Time
- 12:00 p.m. - 1:30 p.m. ET
- Location
- Sears Atrium, George Vari Engineering & Computing Centre - 3rd Floor, 245 Church Street (Doors open at 11:30 a.m. Lunch will be provided.)
As the 2026 CBC Massey Lecturer, Leilani Farha is touring Canada this fall to give five public lectures broadcasted on CBC’s Ideas.
On September 10th, Farha will make a special appearance at Toronto Metropolitan University to deliver a lecture based on her book Housing Inc., which explores the global housing crisis and what it will take to reclaim housing as a fundamental human right—and home as a place of dignity, security, and belonging.
Farha has been in more homes than most people will ever visit: a four-door sedan in San Diego, a lean to beside railway tracks in Lagos, a windowless motel room in Paris, and a tent on a Toronto beach. Across these spaces, she encounters a recurring truth. People do not begin by saying they need housing. They begin by saying they want to be treated like human beings. Housing, Inc. asks why that dignity has become so difficult to secure.
Writing from the centre of global housing debates, Farha traces a crisis more than four decades in the making, shaped by governments and financial systems that have transformed housing into a site of extraction. The same logic that has long dispossessed Indigenous Peoples of their lands now underpins a global system that prices out young people, displaces tenants, fractures communities, and renders homelessness invisible.
Farha argues that this crisis is not isolated but global, playing out in every country in the world. In Housing, Inc., she makes a compelling case that addressing it requires more than incremental policy change. It demands a fundamental shift in ideology toward a framework rooted in human rights, law, and imagination, where every person counts and the meaning of home is reclaimed.
Following the lecture, Farha will join a panel discussion with Jake Effoduh (moderator), Assistant Professor, Lincoln Alexander School of Law at Toronto Metropolitan University; Aliah El-houni, Staff Lawyer, Lincoln Alexander School of Law Legal Clinic; Nemoy Lewis, Assistant Professor, School of Urban and Regional Planning at Toronto Metropolitan University; and Jennifer Stone, Executive Director, Neighbourhood Legal Services.
The event will conclude with a meet-and-greet with the author and books available for sale. Lunch will be provided.
Agenda |
|
| 11:30 a.m. - 12 p.m. | Doors Open |
| 12 p.m. - 12:10 p.m | Welcome |
| 12:10 p.m. - 12:15 p.m | Opening Remarks Donna E. Young |
| 12:15 p.m - 12:45 p.m. | Lecture Leilani Farha Global Director, The Shift |
| 12:45 p.m. - 1:15 p.m. | Panel Discussion Aliah El-houni Nemoy Lewis Jennifer Stone |
1:15 p.m. - 1:30 p.m. |
Audience Q&A |
1:30 p.m. - 2:00 p.m. |
Author Meet & Greet |
Leilani Farha is the Global Director of The Shift, an international human rights organization focused on housing, finance, and climate. She previously served as the the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Housing and is a world expert on human rights and housing. Farha has visited hundreds of people across six continents living in homeless encampments and informal settlements. She is a lawyer, an advocate, and a dreamer who works with anyone interested in creating a more just world.
This special event is co-hosted by the Lincoln Alexander School of Law's International Law and Global Justice Initiative and the School of Interior Design at Toronto Metropolitan University.
PLEASE NOTE: Only registered participants will be admitted to this free community event. We typically oversell our events to ensure the maximum number of attendees. Seating is available on a first come, first served basis, and admission is guaranteed until 12 p.m. or until venue capacity is reached.