The problem is that people say the latter as if it’s a solution on its own without also doing the former.
To my knowledge absolutely no one saying “Ban landlords” is also saying “Don’t build any more housing.” But there are plenty of people who think that you can build housing, in an environment where rich landowners have the ability to buy up and hoard everything you build, and don’t comprehend that this in no way solves the problem.
To my knowledge absolutely no one saying “Ban landlords” is also saying “Don’t build any more housing.”
There are plenty of people (EDIT: some of whom are in this very thread) who like to site that there are more vacant houses in the country than there are homeless people, as if to imply we already have all the housing we need.
But the fact of the matter is that US and Canadian cities have increased in population without a proportional increase in housing stock. The difference is mostly made up by more people living with their parents into adulthood, people living with more roommates to make rent, and multiple families living in “single family” houses.
We don’t do anything about it because home owners treat housing as an investment and expect its price to keep going up forever. Also because people hate multi-unit residential buildings for all sorts of nonsensical and racist reasons.
To be clear I am an advocate for the Vienna model of public housing and programs that temporarily repossess and rent out vacant properties, but I am first and foremost an advocate for housing abundance.
No to deporting immigrants. Yes to banning landlords. For everything else, see my original comment.
And it’s not that building more housing doesn’t help, but on its own it will never be a solution.
As long as housing is an investment, there has to be a housing crisis. Because if the price of housing isn’t on a constant upward trend then it no longer functions as an investment, and the only way to ensure that the price of housing constantly increases is for the supply to be insufficient to meet demand. No matter how much housing you build, wealthy investors will always ensure that it is insufficient to meet demand, because they’d be bad investors if they didn’t.
I need you to learn about the California city of Berkeley, where it is illegal to build more housing because it might cast too much shade and disrupt your neighbor’s hobbyist tomato garden.
You probably read that and thought I was exaggerating for effect. I am not.
The problem is that people say the latter as if it’s a solution on its own without also doing the former.
To my knowledge absolutely no one saying “Ban landlords” is also saying “Don’t build any more housing.” But there are plenty of people who think that you can build housing, in an environment where rich landowners have the ability to buy up and hoard everything you build, and don’t comprehend that this in no way solves the problem.
There are plenty of people (EDIT: some of whom are in this very thread) who like to site that there are more vacant houses in the country than there are homeless people, as if to imply we already have all the housing we need.
But the fact of the matter is that US and Canadian cities have increased in population without a proportional increase in housing stock. The difference is mostly made up by more people living with their parents into adulthood, people living with more roommates to make rent, and multiple families living in “single family” houses.
We don’t do anything about it because home owners treat housing as an investment and expect its price to keep going up forever. Also because people hate multi-unit residential buildings for all sorts of nonsensical and racist reasons.
To be clear I am an advocate for the Vienna model of public housing and programs that temporarily repossess and rent out vacant properties, but I am first and foremost an advocate for housing abundance.
When you say “doing the former” what specifically do mean?
Empirically, building more housing does lower the cost of rent. See Austin for an example. But yeah there is more that could be done for sure.
No to deporting immigrants. Yes to banning landlords. For everything else, see my original comment.
And it’s not that building more housing doesn’t help, but on its own it will never be a solution.
As long as housing is an investment, there has to be a housing crisis. Because if the price of housing isn’t on a constant upward trend then it no longer functions as an investment, and the only way to ensure that the price of housing constantly increases is for the supply to be insufficient to meet demand. No matter how much housing you build, wealthy investors will always ensure that it is insufficient to meet demand, because they’d be bad investors if they didn’t.
I need you to learn about the California city of Berkeley, where it is illegal to build more housing because it might cast too much shade and disrupt your neighbor’s hobbyist tomato garden.
You probably read that and thought I was exaggerating for effect. I am not.
You need to read my comment again, a little more carefully this time.