866
'Renters Are Struggling': Economists Back Tenant-Led Push for Federal Rent Control
(www.commondreams.org)
this post was submitted on 06 Aug 2023
866 points (97.1% liked)
News
23367 readers
2714 users here now
Welcome to the News community!
Rules:
1. Be civil
Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.
2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.
Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.
Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.
5. Only recent news is allowed.
Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.
6. All posts must be news articles.
No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.
7. No duplicate posts.
If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.
8. Misinformation is prohibited.
Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.
9. No link shorteners.
The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.
10. Don't copy entire article in your post body
For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
We don't need rent control. We need them to stop allowing single family dwellings to be owned by huge conglomerates, and particularly foreign interests. It's insanity.
I don't know enough about corporate and foreign home ownership, is it that big of a problem?
What I do know, is government preventing building houses is causing a housing shortage.
Investors buy on the order of 25% of all residential real estate available. Big money uses its leverage to do this in order to raise the prices (due to the scarcity that they are helping create), which they then use to drive up rents or flip properties at a profit. This cycle has been on repeat for several years now. This is why you see people doubling and tripling up living together and it won't stop until they can't do it anymore or our legislators decide to do something about it which I don't even know why I bother saying it like there's any chance they will.
Foreign ownership of US property is certainly a significant percentage of that equation, but there are other reasons why its important to pay better attention to foreign ownership. Allowing foreign interests unrestricted access to property in the States ends up giving us stupidity like Saudi Arabia feeding its cattle alfalfa grown in Arizona. One of the most water-intensive crops in existence that its own government won't allow it to grow itself, is grown instead in our desert, while our own citizens get their water cut off.
Edit: it may technically be "supply and demand" when 25% of everything available is bought with the intention of making a profit on it rather than providing a place to live - but it isn't beneficial to the citizens of this country when the whole world and all its big business interests can compete with individuals to buy housing.
Yes, lack of housing is the bigger issue. Here in the Boston area, it's pure supply and demand. Neighborhoods are full of triple-deckers just off the city center that could be denser apartment buildings. Landlords can charge whatever they want, because they know that anyone who wants to live in the area will have a hard time finding another place.
There's also the question of transit infrastructure. Even with less dense housing, if there were easy ways to get around other than cars, proximity would be less of an issue.
I mean, you're just saying supply and demand still. They're charging that because that's what someone is willing to pay.
Agreed, the U.S. as a whole has had incredible incompetence with government officials regarding public transit. If we had reliable train and bus systems, we'd be in a much better position.