Speaker: Gavin Silber

New Yorkers are all too familiar with the challenges posed by rising housing costs – more than half of residents in the City today are considered excessively rent burdened.  But, this is increasingly a global problem affecting cities in the developed and developing world alike. What drives this phenomenon? What consequences does it have? What legal and regulatory tools can governments use to combat it?

Gavin Silber will address these questions, and also discuss activism underway in South Africa to compel the state to play a stronger role in regulating property markets. Apartheid left South Africa with what are today some of the world’s most spatially divided cities. Nowhere is this inequality more evident than in Cape Town – a City recently ranked as having the third highest property inflation rate in the world.

Gavin is a South African urban planner with a decade of experience working in social movements. He is a founding member and past director of the the Social Justice Coalition – a Cape Town based social movement that campaigns for improved public services in informal settlements.  He recently worked with Ndifuna Ukwazi to launch its Reclaim The City campaign to reverse spatial Apartheid in Cape Town through more progressive housing and spatial planning policy.

Gavin is currently in the United States to launch Equal Cities – a new initiative focused on channeling progressive research and training support to urban social movements working for radical change.

The Leitner Center is cosponsoring this event with the Urban Law Center.

Kosher pizza will be served.