If you want to watch it on your schedule and don’t mind paying $4 to $5, click HERE.
We had a great time while filming the movie, and hopefully some day we’ll see what ended up on the cutting-room floor. Here are the previous blog posts:
The unrest throughout America reminds me of our movie, now more poignant than ever. Giorgio dedicated five years of his life to producing – check it out for $3.99:
This is literally the first day in 2013 when I met Giorgio, Guy Mossman, and their crew for filming the documentary film which comes out on Tuesday.
I had no idea what to expect, so we just winged it. It shows.
They came back a few times over the years, and every time the experience was fantastic. The film took a different turn and followed the racial, sociological impacts, but it could have chased why people make decisions the way they do – maybe next round?
The film is a riveting 82-minute account of how housing policy has helped to create social injustice in this country, and I highly recommend it – and not because I’m in it (our role is small). Here is the trailer:
This article features ten films that document the housing crisis and discrimination in America, with a bonus eleventh film that includes a certain part-time blogger:
The C.A.R. sent out this paper that reviews the current housing dilemma, which boils down to having to improve zoning regulations to facilitate more/better infill projects because the more-mature cities are out of land for the most part. She also included this:
However, the paper also offers evidence that cities can use their control over the development process to limit access to housing, sometimes in problematic ways. The finding that less housing is built in cities with both higher homeownership rates and White populations is sadly consistent with existing research on NIMBY opposition to local housing development (Lewis & Baldassare, 2010; Scally & Tighe, 2015; Whittemore & BenDor, 2018). These studies examined opposition to building multifamily or affordable housing; it is striking that in this study cities with more homeowners and larger white populations had less single-family development. This finding serves as yet another warning that racial exclusion from White communities continues to limit housing opportunities for people of color.
The documentary-film premiere went great on Saturday at Cinepolis, where we had about 80 people view the movie – and they liked it! You’ll see it on iTunes on June 4th – here is a partial description from the websitewww.ownedfilm.com
The United States’ postwar housing policy created the world’s largest middle class. It also set America on two divergent paths — one of imagined wealth, propped up by speculation and endless booms and busts, and the other in systematically defunded, segregated communities, where “the American dream” feels hopelessly out of reach.
Owned is a fever dream vision into the dark history behind the US housing economy. Tracking its overtly racist beginnings and its unbridled commoditization, the film exposes a foundational story that few Americans understand as their own.
In 2008, the US housing market became the epicenter of an unprecedented global economic collapse. In the years since, protests in cities like Baltimore have highlighted the stark racial disparities that define many American cities. The crash of suburbia and urban unrest are not unrelated — they are two sides of the same coin, two divergent paths set in motion by the United States’ post-war housing policy.
Great news about the doc-film – it will be available on iTunes on June 4th. Here is Giorgio’s blooper reel of my actual homebuyer tips (and the first time I’ve cussed on video – beware):
