Housing is a recognized human right in Mexico and Canada. But it’s also big business and a major source of conflict in many countries around the world.
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00:00They're kicking us all out.
00:14They're kicking out the whole community.
00:16I've been here for 50 years.
00:19Here in Mexico City, the value of my dollar goes way further.
00:24They rent Airbnbs.
00:26They pay in dollars and in euros.
00:30I can't go back to New York because, honestly, I can't afford to live there now.
00:35They're stealing my space.
00:38I could be a part of the problem, but I don't really know.
00:45We're breaking history here in Canada.
00:46It's the largest First Nation land development in Canadian history.
00:52When you build giant towers next to very small housing that's existed there for decades,
00:58people are going to be upset, and they are upset.
01:01We're here addressing the housing crisis.
01:04They should know it's Squamish Nation land, and we're back.
01:09It's way too big, way too tall, way too dense.
01:11You don't like it?
01:12Move on.
01:13Hola.
01:14Hola.
01:15They're going to throw me out because of digital nomads like you.
01:20Leave Mexico.
01:22Leave.
01:23Leave.
01:24Who gets to decide what happens to our neighbourhood?
01:28And to us?
01:29We all need a roof over our heads.
01:31But housing's also a big business, and that means big conflicts.
01:50Good afternoon, OK, one bedroom, furnished.
02:20Sorry to bother you.
02:21I see you've got an apartment for rent.
02:24Thanks so much.
02:26Wow, 60,000 pesos.
02:31Years ago I was paying 4,000 pesos.
02:38My rent is now 7,500 pesos.
02:43But if I wanted to rent another apartment like the one I have now, it would be 45, 50,000,
02:48at least.
02:53As soon as the pandemic ended, we were invaded by digital nomads.
02:58Property owners started selling off everything.
03:01And we're home.
03:04I would call myself a typical digital nomad because I'm able to work from anywhere.
03:10My name is Casey Urban.
03:12I work as a travel blogger.
03:15My company is called Follow the Fro Tours.
03:18For example, I went to Antarctica last year and I had 63 people come with me.
03:23I like connecting with others.
03:25I think that's the thing that drives me to keep traveling.
03:29When I'm traveling, my phone is kind of attached to me at all times.
03:34Any moment could be an opportunity to create some content.
03:37I'm staying in Roma again, which is one of my favourite parts of the city.
03:43There's few places I would consider to have as a home base, and Mexico City is one of
03:48those places I would consider.
03:49I don't feel like I'm an outsider.
03:52I do feel comfortable here and I feel welcomed.
03:58I live in Roma.
04:02It's a very quiet, very safe neighbourhood, which is a pretty rare thing for Mexico City.
04:09The neighbourhood used to belong to us.
04:13We're at the mercy of the digital nomads.
04:18A lot of digital nomads like Roma.
04:20It's an easy place to walk around.
04:22There's so many cafes to go to if I want to get work done.
04:25It's an easy place to live, especially as a digital nomad.
04:30I've looked for other apartments, but there's nothing I can afford here.
04:36Prices are sky high.
04:40Mexico officially considers housing a human right.
04:43So why can't Maripaz afford to live in her own neighbourhood?
04:47Mexico City, like most cities around the world, is not building housing fast enough for its
04:51growing population.
04:53The competition for living space is fierce, especially in trendy neighbourhoods like Roma.
04:58And landlords know they can make more money with short-term rentals to people like Casey
05:02than renting to locals.
05:10I moved in here 20 years ago.
05:19For me, my home is my refuge.
05:28It's been the centre of my family life, where I raised my son, where I've had times of happiness,
05:39also plenty of sadness and problems too.
05:44But even so, it's my space, my refuge.
05:53The landlord was a kind man, but he died.
05:59His sons came to tell me they wouldn't be renewing my lease and that everyone had to
06:03leave.
06:04They're going to turn everything into Airbnbs.
06:08All my neighbours got scared and started looking for places.
06:12Not in this neighbourhood, of course.
06:14In other areas.
06:15There's no space left for us.
06:20If we weren't homeowners today, you know, our paths would be completely different.
06:42We rented one bedroom before we had children.
06:46It felt like 85% of our income went to rent.
06:51I love my neighbourhood.
06:52I love my city.
06:57I live in Kitsilano in Vancouver, and I'm very, very fortunate to have purchased an
07:01apartment back in the 1990s when it was still slightly affordable.
07:05And we had some help from my parents, and we just put our minds to paying off the mortgage.
07:12We have a very lovely property, and it's gone up astronomically in value.
07:18The house was basically gifted from my father's best friend who'd passed away.
07:23It opened many doors for us.
07:27We've got extreme competition for any housing, but particularly for affordable housing.
07:32And it's only getting worse over the last 30 years.
07:37This is the most expensive city in Canada because we really are faced with some real
07:43restrictions.
07:44We have the American border to our south.
07:45We have mountains to the north.
07:47We have the ocean to the west.
07:48And then we have a long valley to the east.
07:50So that's the only place people can really expand.
07:53Or you can concentrate, and you can also build up.
07:57Nowhere to go but up?
07:59Vancouver's population is growing, and the city needs more apartments.
08:03But there's hardly anywhere to put them.
08:05When Vancouver was built, single-family homes like these were the norm.
08:09Now these houses take up huge parts of the city, and only the wealthy can afford them.
08:14Vancouver's been ranked as one of the world's most livable cities.
08:18But livable for whom?
08:21Vancouver is in a housing crisis.
08:24A lot of people want to live in Vancouver, but you basically have to be a millionaire
08:28to live here.
08:29My name's Wilson Williams.
08:31Swaghton is my ancestral name.
08:34I'm an elected councillor for the Squamish Nation.
08:38I've been living in the city for over 20 years.
08:41I've been living in the city for over 20 years.
08:44I've been living in the city for over 20 years.
08:47I'm an elected councillor for the Squamish Nation.
08:52If you were to venture on an airplane 2,000 years ago, you would see just green and forest.
09:00There would be villages filled with longhouses, canoes that went for blocks on the beach.
09:10You would come across our people.
09:13We have a sad history of the way that Indigenous people were dealt with by settlers
09:18in the early parts of first contact, centuries ago.
09:22You know, we can't go backwards and play it differently.
09:25For us to be forced out of our lands, it's still very raw.
09:29You know, it's just over 100 years ago.
09:32It kind of takes away your identity.
09:37Where do you belong if someone tells you you don't belong here anymore?
09:42I would almost compare it to our homelessness today, where people just have nowhere to go.
09:47And, you know, they land in these statistics where there's 30% of people incarcerated are Indigenous.
09:56Our nation needs money.
09:59This is what we need to survive.
10:01We just opened transitional housing in our community,
10:05which serves those who are coming in and out of incarceration.
10:10Those with mental health issues.
10:14You know, homeless and addictions, drugs, alcohol, whatever it may be.
10:20Even prescription drugs and whatnot, yeah.
10:23But the safe place for them to be and for us to check on them.
10:29One of my distant cousins never had a place to call home since her childhood.
10:34This is a lady who's been displaced and couch surfing for 18 years.
10:39How are you guys doing?
10:40It's nice to have a roof over my head and I'm super duper happy.
10:45A lot of us were struggling, but I think I made it.
10:50I imagine a place for people not struggling in poverty.
11:03A home is the most important thing you can have.
11:08A roof over your head to sleep, to take shelter.
11:14What is home?
11:16It's a hard question for me to necessarily answer since I've been nomadic for eight years.
11:21I love being a digital nomad.
11:25You get to interact with people, learn a new culture.
11:28Cheers!
11:30I will eat anything. I will at least try everything at least once.
11:35Traveling makes the world a better place just because it makes you more open-minded.
11:39If you have the opportunity to do it, it's great.
11:59I've never traveled outside Mexico.
12:05Superbarrio is an activist who defends tenants' rights.
12:17Without his help, I don't know how I would have managed.
12:24Come on in, Superbarrio.
12:31There are two ways this could go.
12:36One would be that you manage to negotiate getting your lease renewed.
12:43The other, the one you have to watch out for, is that they might send thugs, people to evict you by force.
12:53There were threats from the landlords that they were going to use violence to throw us out.
13:00Superbarrio told me, don't worry, you're not leaving, you're staying.
13:05Let me show you the photo.
13:09I didn't tell them I put up cameras.
13:13That's an obscene gesture.
13:15They want to intimidate me.
13:20I'm trying to be brave.
13:23I have to go to court in a few days.
13:29They're starting a trial to evict me.
13:36This should have never happened.
13:38We never should have been kicked out of our own territories, our own village.
13:44Sonoc was burnt down.
13:46This was one of the last villages in the country.
13:48Sonoc was burnt down.
13:50This was one of the last villages in Vancouver we were expropriated from.
13:55And probably the most hurtful.
13:59The Indigenous people, our nation, we were an inconvenience.
14:03Our natural way of being and living and surviving off the land wasn't the way of the future, according to the government.
14:10So we were removed.
14:14But you also see the looks of hope.
14:16The hope for the future, because there's plans in place.
14:22Sonoc is the biggest First Nation land development in Canadian history.
14:28It will have 6,000 plus units, housing over 9,000 people.
14:33250 of those units will be for Squamish Nation members.
14:38My heart grew two sizes knowing that we're back in our territory.
14:41I think a lot of people in Vancouver, when they see the size and scale of this, are going to be shocked and not happy about it.
14:48Even if people are upset, the Squamish can legally build whatever they want here, in what is now the middle of Vancouver, because Sonoc is their reserve land.
14:58The Canadian government took it away in 1913, but the Squamish won it back in court in 2001.
15:05And they got a billion-dollar government loan to build the towers with help from a luxury real estate developer.
15:11Prime Minister Justin Trudeau called the project Reconciliation in Action.
15:16Reconciliation is not simply putting up massive towers and making a lot of money. That's what developers do all around the world.
15:25Our people have been here for almost 2,500 years now.
15:29We're revitalizing that history, but at the same time creating that economic wealth.
15:36It's built on First Nations reserve land, so the city doesn't have any control over it. The regulations don't apply, the height limitations.
15:44It's so good to see the cranes, eh? Holy, eh?
15:49Even though people aren't going to be used to it around here, you know, it's the new way of the future, right?
15:55No longer being out of sight, out of mind in the city of Vancouver, in our own village.
16:01Vancouver definitely needs more housing, but we don't need more expensive, luxury, high-rise towers in Vancouver. There are lots.
16:10We need cooperatives, we need other types of housing.
16:14Ultimately, I think governments are going to have to provide housing for middle-income people for this city to continue to work and function.
16:22Otherwise, we're doomed.
16:24Where am I going to go? My things will be on the street.
16:29And I'll go to a hotel? An old folks' home? Even those cost money, so the street it is.
16:39Cheers to new friends in Mexico City!
16:41Cheers!
16:43As someone who's been traveling for so long, finding communities is the thing I yearn for the most.
16:47One reason I do like Mexico City is they do have quite a few digital nomads.
16:52I started traveling back in 2015. Everyone was just like, how do you afford to do this? How can you do this?
16:59My answer was always, traveling's way cheaper than my rent in New York City.
17:03The U.S. is very hard to live in, in any single city. Our rent is going up, too.
17:09We can't live in our own country because it's unaffordable getting paid the salaries we're getting paid in our own currency. That's insane.
17:20My life before traveling was quite different. My goal was just to make a lot of money.
17:28My network as well was this bubble of overachievers, finance people, living in New York City, living their best life.
17:39When I left New York, I gave my furniture to some friends. I was like, hey, you guys can hold on to this for a year. I have no idea where that furniture is now.
17:57David is my neighbor. Well, he was. He lived in the building next door.
18:03I threw out the last bag of trash today.
18:09Overnight the lease ran out and everyone in the building had to leave.
18:16This kind of gentrification, throwing people out and turning apartments into Airbnbs, it's a big business.
18:23And I can't go back and start over again. I'm not 20 anymore.
18:30But I'm going to fight till the end. Till the end.
18:38I'm not sure if there ever was a point where I realized I wasn't going to do one year. My travels kept extending by accident.
18:47And somehow it's ended up being eight years. And what I realized is the best plan is no plan.
18:56I just learned how to live on a budget and seasonal work. But I was living probably off of $10,000 a year for about five years.
19:09Now my budget, I probably spend closer to around $30,000 a year. I'm pretty sure my friends in New York are working a lot more than I am.
19:25When my neighbors were still here, we were like a family.
19:30We'd get together to celebrate Christmas and New Year's, eat our Three Kings Day cake together.
19:38Now I'm alone. I don't have anybody.
19:42My neighbors didn't come together to fight it because they're cowards.
19:46I'm not a coward.
19:48I'm not a coward.
19:58This is a battle for the soul of Vancouver, really, what's going on.
20:02And it's not a battle between Indigenous people and other nationalities.
20:06It's a battle between developers who put profits ahead of everything else and ordinary people who want to see affordable, practical housing that works for people.
20:14For us, looking at it through, you know, an Indigenous lens, we are putting ourselves in a position of strength.
20:22The Squamish want to build even more towers here on this former military base called the Jericho Lands, located on traditional First Nations territory.
20:31They're teaming up with two other Indigenous groups and the Canadian government.
20:36The plan is to build apartments for 28,000 people. The tallest three towers would be almost 50 stories.
20:43This is really just pure irony. Help us shape the future of the Jericho Lands.
20:49Neighbors said this is too dense, this is too high, it's too many people, it's too tall.
20:54And what happens? It comes back with more units, higher density, higher heights.
20:59That's shaping the future.
21:01Jericho is going to be a huge staple for the future.
21:06We're changing the evolution of our people. We're changing lives.
21:08There's going to be subsidized rental units for our people.
21:11There's going to be a vibrant community where we can live, work and play all in the same area.
21:18A lot of people live in Vancouver because it has this natural balance of park and green space and ocean and mountain and sky and everything else.
21:28And all of a sudden it's like, no, you don't have a choice. This is going to become one of the densest areas in the world.
21:34And there's three 49-story towers and there's 60 high-rises, 13,000 units, 28,000 people.
21:43Well, when you build 49-story towers in this city, you're mostly likely to sell to foreign investors.
21:50I mean, that's just the reality. Certainly you're going to be selling to very rich people.
21:54I'm just worried they're going to knock down all the affordable housing and build up a lot of towers that aren't affordable.
21:58I knew it was going to be big. I didn't know it was going to be 49 stories big.
22:00So, as a young person, housing in this place must be insane.
22:04Yeah, it's almost impossible to have someone like me.
22:07It looks like our neighbourhood is going to be completely transformed in a very negative way.
22:13We listen as good neighbours, but, you know, we were never in a place to tell them what to do.
22:20We're the underdog. We're David versus Goliath here, not the other way around.
22:24Also, we've proposed alternatives.
22:25We worked with architects, planners, people who are very much involved in development themselves,
22:31to develop an alternative proposal, which is all low-rise.
22:35Bill's part of a group called the Jericho Coalition.
22:39Here's what they say the Indigenous developers should build here.
22:42All four to eight stories, no towers.
22:45They call it human-scale housing, and they say it's more environmentally friendly.
22:50Their proposal has apartments for 16,000 people,
22:53that's about half the number the current plan would house.
22:58I really feel strongly, my wife feels strongly, that people have to stand up and say, this is too much.
23:05We're still alive and well.
23:07Still have housing.
23:09Still have housing.
23:11Cheers.
23:13I still put it in the middle of the Jericho plan.
23:16No, that's about the size of the tower.
23:17I will be out picketing every day if this truly goes ahead.
23:22I will be out every day on 4th Avenue with my picket sign, diligently.
23:30Yeah, I can do it. I will do it.
23:34Hearing stories about people who are being pushed out of their living situations,
23:41it might be hard to relate because I've never been in that situation before myself.
23:45Ever since the situation with the house started, I can't sleep.
23:49I go to bed very late, 4 in the morning, just tossing and turning, thinking, what am I going to do?
23:56What's going to happen today?
23:58Horrible depression, anxiety that I wouldn't wish upon anyone.
24:05I can't sleep.
24:07What's going to happen today?
24:10Horrible depression, anxiety that I wouldn't wish upon anyone.
24:18It's been the toughest year of my life.
24:24I'm scared. I'm terrified of what might happen.
24:29Rent is going up. Do digital nomads have an effect on this?
24:32I definitely think we do.
24:33But I also think it's a global phenomenon that's happening around the world.
24:37I don't want to be a part of the problem of making housing unaffordable.
24:57I heard you're my neighbor in Roma.
25:00What do you think of the neighborhood?
25:03And how you guys are invading and kicking us out.
25:08People like me, old people, you're destroying our lives.
25:14We just wanted to spend our last days here in peace.
25:18Instead, we're suffering because of you.
25:24I see that your love for your home, where you're living.
25:30I see your pain.
25:34She sees my pain? But who's going to help me?
25:38I'm alone at this age. I'm not her age anymore.
25:42If I were, I wouldn't worry.
25:45But what am I going to do on my own?
25:50I've been crying for an entire year.
25:53Is there anything that...
25:58Is there any message that I can share to my counterparts?
26:06Leave Mexico.
26:08Leave Mexico.
26:14We don't know how the world's going to be 10, 50, 100 years from now.
26:18We need to plan.
26:20We need to look at what it's going to take for our people to continue to survive
26:24beyond natural disasters, beyond further impositions of our people.
26:30We've got to prepare for that.
26:32We'll stand tall and proud back in our own territories for many, many years.
26:49Neighborhoods should be allowed to have significant input in what happens in their community.
26:55We're trying to find a place where everyone is treated equally and fairly,
27:00and that's not what we're feeling about this proposal.
27:04Indigenous people have been displaced, and we need reconciliation.
27:09We need to try and fix generations of problems.
27:13But it doesn't simply come from profits.
27:15It doesn't simply come from profits.
27:26One question, if you're open to sharing your contact,
27:31I would also like to share some of your story with my audience, if you're okay with that.
27:39With your audience?
27:41Of course, sure.
27:43Yes, yes, yes.
27:46Yes.
27:48Thank you very much.