this post was submitted on 26 Oct 2024
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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.
100% Agree
I'm not sure how banning landlords works though. Like everybody has to own their own house? What about apartment buildings or people living somewhere for the short-term? Or are you think like where the government is the landlord for everybody - sort of like Vienna?
Let me clarify; I personally believe in banning the existence of private landlords.
I would propose a housing model where rental housing is handled by regional Crown corporations (this is a specifically Canadian concept, but the model translates easily; its a not-for-profit company established by the government with a legal obligation to follow their founding charter, but with no other involvement in from the government, except potentially as a funding stream).
These corporations would buy up available housing to meet rental demand, and rent at prices determined by an established formula, calculated not to exceed a set percentage of mean regional incomes. Access to in demand units would be handled via waiting lists.
Renters would be given the option to buy out their homes (possibly with a rent to own program), and the corporations would have a mandate to build new supply which they would then sell on the market or rent out, as fits local needs. Some amount of supply would always be reserved for rentals, because there will always be a demand for rentals, even if housing is affordable (sometimes you're only living somewhere for a short while). Its conceivable that some rental units would ineligible for buy out because of the importance of maintaining rental supply in that area.
Standard disclaimer: This is not two hundred page policy paper, nor has it gone through the months of expert review and study that would precede the enactment of an actual policy like this. If your entire criticism is "Ah but you haven't thought of tiny detail X" stop and ask yourself "Does this actually undermine the entire idea in a truly fundamental way, or is it just a detail of implementation?"