this post was submitted on 24 Aug 2023
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Economics
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How do policies that would put downward pressure on rent make poor people poorer?
There is a long history of passing costs onto the consumer. If costs go up for empty units, rents go up on occupied units to cover and / or recoup those costs.
This would also disincentives property owners from doing renovations by adding additional costs, since the units need to be vacant during construction.
Without functional regulations and protections around rents and renters, all of the pressure will just gets pushed down stream to impact the most vulnerable.
That's certainly a risk, but it might be easier said than done to raise rents if some landlords decide to bring their warehoused units back to market. Of course, if they're colluding and what's actually going on is a capital strike, then all bets are off. One way or another, capital needs to be disciplined.
Absolutely, we need regulations to protect tenants and keep rents under control. We also need a massive effort to increase the supply of publicly owned housing. I think part of this has to include public acquisition of private housing, but it will help to start squeezing the landlords before hand with various measures in order to minimize the expenditure.
@CrimeDad @Coreidan I don't believe this, but I will give it a go in trying to steelman this argument.
If landlords and real estate developers see a sector specific decrease in returns then they would decrease the capital in the sector and thus decrease the housing units made available for rent.
This theory ignores the real world where developers opted-out of low-income housing in favor of luxury real estate that either remains vacant or unoccupied while the owner uses it as value storage
TIL what steelmanning is.
At the end of the day, I don't think the landlord problem will be fixed by adjusting incentives alone. They have to be combined with a massive project to build lots of publicly owned housing and the supporting infrastructure.
@CrimeDad can I introduce you to Singapore with 80% owned housing units by government
Are there some significant contradictions to their program? I'm not really familiar with Singapore or their housing policies, but it seems like they have a pretty low homelessness rate of 0.02%, which I suppose is a good sign. I know they have a very high population density, so maybe the high portion of government ownership helps with efficiency.
@CrimeDad the low homelessness is due to the highest rate of public housing outside of self-identified socialist countries. The first several decades public housing was primarily for relocated squatters and shanty inhabitants, but since the 1980s they've promoted it for middle class and upper middle class improving the public housing stock.
Decreased capital in sector means landlords own fewer rental properties. Would this make home ownership more accessible?