say it with me:
BUILDING
APARTMENTS
WITHOUT
CONTROLS
ON
THE
RENTS
OF
THOSE
APARTMENTS
ONLY
ENRICHES
DEVELOPERS
AND
DOES
NOT
DRIVE
DOWN
RENTS
thinking that it does is some neolib "free market" bullshit
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doing the opposite hasn't exactly served us well, forgive me if I disregard conventional wisdom here, because it seems to be constructed entirely to maintain a status quo that is unbearable to the lower 1/3rd or so of the economy
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totally--it's awful! and I shout my lungs out about it daily the take from my angle is not: landlords greedy vs not, take greed as a constant over time and judge as you like but house prices are skyrocketing mostly because it's nigh-impossible to build more housing where needed
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How is building luxury a requirement for building denser? Denser is already more profitable, without having to displace the current demographic of a neighborhood. The density strawman is from rich landowners blocking building in their neighborhoods in the first place.
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The driver of housing prices is not luxury but simple scarcity of square footage. Consider: $3000 will get you a decaying closet in Manhattan or a palace in St. Cloud, MN Luxury condos in historically poor neighborhoods are gross aesthetically but not the root problem
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Yes, and you cure pricing by rent controlling, which is the point. You're replacing a lottery system with a highest bidder system (i.e. rich only) when you remove rent control. This is lateral to density.
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Oh no Rent control is still a highest bidder system but instead of competition on price you compete on other margins "I have eighty tenants who want every unit. Why should I choose you? What can you offer me that others can't?"
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Maybe I add outrageous key fees. Maybe I never repair the place. Maybe I only rent to ethnicity groups I like. What does it cost me? I'm not giving up any money by treating my tenants poorly. They're all paying below market.
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You can try to outlaw these things but in practice this is impossible Even if you succeeded the response would be decaying and never-replenished housing stock, since landlords would have no incentive to keep places up to attract tenants, and no expectation of profit on new units
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i appreciate machinists and would never suppose i have any notion of how to do your work, most likely I would injure myself within twenty seconds of even viewing your tools in this light i am curious why you imagine you have special insight into optimal housing market design
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because if the things that I machine were constantly fucking up your life and the lives of millions of people around you, on a massive scale and in long-term ways, I wouldn't be surprised if you walked into my machine shop and said "you are doing something very wrong here"
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and if you said: well, I would love to build a better machine; here are the forces preventing me from building this machine, and here are the reasons your proposed alternative will be even worse---
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I don't want to hear about why we can't do bold things, or that my idea is bad, in absence of a better idea. The argument against drastic application of rent control on basically all new development seems to be just "actually we have to keep doing it the way that doesn't work"
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Tell me how we *significantly* reduce rents in a way that DOES NOT rely on good faith from rich people, and I'm all ears.
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I think it's helpful to view rich people, or capitalists, or however you define these groups as cold machines that chase their own interest. If you set up a system where chasing that interest is beneficial to you, you don't have to trust them to do anything but be selfish.
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In this case, you make it easier for them to build tons of dense housing in high-demand by removing laws that make this impossible. People are willing to pay for that housing; knowing they can make money by building and renting, capitalists build and rent. Now,
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my *guess* is that your objection is something like: how does this reduce rents? Allow that landlords want to charge as much as they possibly can--I agree that they do, pretty generally! They'd take every penny from tenants if they could. All that's stopping them is competition
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