Unnamed property owners. Untenanted properties. Uninhabited towns. Why are attractive towns becoming just stage sets where ordinary people can’t live?

Leilani Farha, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Housing, travels the world. Toronto, Barcelona, London, New York – the situation is the same. Rent is skyrocketing, but income isn’t. Town centres are emptying as the middle-classes can no longer manage the unfavourable price changes. However, their former residences echo with emptiness. Financial groups have discovered that real estate is a good capital investment, and town halls struggle to reverse this worldwide trend. Internationally prominent individuals, such as sociologist Saskia Sassen, the Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz, and Roberto Saviano, an author in hiding from the Mafia, add their informed commentaries.