Living in a country deep in the grip of a housing crisis, Slumlord Millionaire, a film by Steph Ching and Ellen Martinez, hits home. The constant fear of losing the roof over your head is real and palpable for most of a certain income and more so for those of a certain socioeconomic and or certainly ethnic background.
This picture takes us into the heart of the housing crisis in New York, perpetrated by redevelopment, rapacious landlords and heavy financial influence on the city’s residents, these and the sheer fact that cities may indeed be only for the rich to inhabit in the future ahead seems to be the grim specter which lurks beneath the heart-wrenchingly intense battles these families, individuals and communities face off in the fight for lives having greater meaning than profit.
We see the battlefield in meticulous scope. From a Latino family suffering under the yoke of a vicious and unscrupulous landlord to a former supermodel having her real estate investment stolen from under her nose via deed fraud to the Chinatown community battling against billionaire developers blocking out the sun and the sky from their part of the city, as riverfront views are all the rage for the mega-rich. Picture government housing across the street from buildings where a cheap apartment starts at 6 million dollars.
There is also the story of a young woman with political aspirations. Desperately seeking to change the laws and give some control back into the hands of the people who are forced to pay rent to have a home. So, they might have, as should be every person’s right on this planet, to have a safe, secure, and livable dwelling. Sadly, her fight is crushed by a consortium of rich dudes who pump out generic smear campaigns against any pests who might come in and interfere with the take.
“…takes us into the heart of the housing crisis in New York…”
As much as it is thought-provoking, what this movie really makes me is angry. Angry that we still live in a wealthy world, that the kings on the hill have enough money to end all homeless and hunger, yet they buy billion dollar yachts and bunkers, because when the end of the world arrives and the vast majority of us are wiped out, all the billionaires will come out from the bunkers and have a cocktail and a chuckle, pat themselves on the back for forward planning.
Slumlord Millionaire is a wake-up call. If you don’t see what’s happening to our society, then you’re blind or you just don’t want to see. Trouble doesn’t mean much to the majority until it comes knocking on their front door; it’s out of sight, out of mind. But when we open our eyes, the problem still exists.
Like Keith David’s King in Platoon tells Charlie Sheen’s Chris, “The poor are always being f@#ked over by the rich.” And nothing has changed. But Slumlord Millionaire also illustrates that the fight isn’t over, and all the people who make less than $600,000 a year will not go quietly into the night. They’re going to live on, they’re going to survive. It’s a “they-got-the-guns-but-we-got-the-numbers” scenario that looms at this time in our culture, and the needs of the many should not be in the control of people who have never known hard times.
"…a wake-up call."
