‘PUSH’ screening in Charlottetown Sunday afternoon

The P.E.I. Fight for Affordable Housing Group (PEIFAH), a grassroots voice for the tenant community of P.E.I., is hosting a screening of “PUSH”.

It will be shown on Sunday, Sept. 8, 2-4 p.m., at City Cinema in Charlottetown, with the support of the United Way of Prince Edward Island and the Cooper Institute,

This award-winning documentary highlights the plight of tenants around the world, in a gentrified battle over housing rights.

In the film, director Fredrik Gertten follows the UN Special Rapporteur on Housing, Leilani Farha. It is her job to challenge governments to secure a fundamental human right - housing for all.

She’s travelling the globe, trying to understand who is being pushed out of the city and why. She meets people from Toronto, New York, Barcelona and London who are directly affected by the growing housing crisis as gentrification and the desire for landowners to increase profits puts them within steps of homelessness.

The screening of “PUSH” in Charlottetown comes at a pivotal moment in the Island’s history.

Residents across the province are being evicted from their homes, to make way for landlords to carry out key renovations aimed at re-renting those same units at higher rates or to short-term, Airbnbstyle tenants at inflated costs. Currently, with a vacancy rate on Prince Edward Island sitting at two per cent Island residents are being forced from their homes to live in cars or on the streets.

The PEIFAH is a grassroots housing rights group formed as a voice for the tenant community, to build the tenant movement and do their utmost to represent the tenant collective needs to government. Holding them to account on their policy decisions.