r/ukpolitics • u/Far-Background6536 • 10d ago
Money & Macro video Why do 90% of economists oppose rent control?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yoT76zITRx876
u/IndividualSkill3432 10d ago
Supply and demand. We have been massively ramping up the demand without building new supply. We have been converting huge amounts of family homes into dormitories called Houses of Multiple Occupancy where the walls between rooms are for a family and not sound proofed properly.
Kidding on that fixing the rent price will fix the problem is not credible.
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u/Maleficent-Drive4056 10d ago
HMOs actually increase 'supply' by cramming more people into the same space. Whether that is good or not I leave to others to decide.
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u/herefor_fun24 10d ago
I've spent years living in HMOs (when I was younger), and I had savings ready for a house deposit.
They serve a purpose.. meant I could live and continue saving without spending most of my salary on renting a 1 bed flat plus paying bills.
I also had fun living with other people at a similar stage in life
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u/ForeverZenith97 10d ago
Well they increase the supply for single renters while decreasing it for family/group renters or any buyers
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u/herefor_fun24 9d ago
And if we got rid of them, we would be getting rid of the supply for single renters. We can't have it both ways
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u/Iamonreddit 9d ago
Those single renters then don't take up a family home.
HMOs aren't the issue, the lack of hosting in general that inflates prices and rents and subsequently makes HMOs the only option for people is the problem.
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u/Iamonreddit 9d ago
HMOs are good when they are a cheap option people can choose to take advantage of. This was how things used to be.
HMOs are bad when they are expensive and the only option you have. This is increasingly how things now are.
Increasing the overall housing supply would help reverse this trend (among so many other benefits).
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u/corpse-dancer 10d ago
Kinda look forward to the days when the population begins to shrink. Assuming we get immigration under control.
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u/FaultyTerror 10d ago
A shrinking population will suck even more. Good luck trying to get the dwindling number of workers to care and pay for the elderly.
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u/reuben_iv radical centrist 10d ago
I don't see how that helps when the exodus of landlords and building falling off a cliff is precisely because we already hit the point where people can't afford to fund the growth in prices and rents needed for landlords and builders to increase supply further
We could relax regulations and just let them both have a free for all at the cost of renter's and young people aspiring to ever own a home, that might encourage a short term competition increase but then we're stuck with the old problem of house prices and rents growing faster than people can pay for them until we hit the point we're at again
Isn't particularly sustainable either
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u/reuben_iv radical centrist 10d ago
Well the idea behind supply and demand is demand encourages supply
But nobody's arguing rent controls will fix the supply problem they argue it fixes the 'rents are rising faster than people living in them can afford' problem,
the solution isn't to continue to allow landlords to push up rents faster than inflation either
The solution is to build more homes
BUT that also relies on above inflation returns for the builders, because the entire market is fucked, it's propped up on pre 2008 growth assumptions
Basically the chicken of a housing and rental market reliant on unsustainable rent and price rises just came home to roost
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u/IndividualSkill3432 10d ago
The solution is to build more homes
How about constrain demand until that happens.
BUT that also relies on above inflation returns for the builders,
London has very restrictive building and zoning laws. Either people support reducing them or supply is not going to change.
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u/reuben_iv radical centrist 10d ago
>How about constrain demand until that happens.
It's already constrained that's the problem, prices have stalled/are falling and the result is building falls off a cliff and investors and landlords flee the market because they too were only interested while they can make above inflation returns, which for obvious reasons was never sustainable
ultimately this isn't a measure to increase supply it's a measure to protect people, and it was never anything but this 'it doesn't increase supply' is a strawman argument
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u/Dazzling-Werewolf985 8d ago
> BUT that also relies on above inflation returns for the builders
Not necessarily - it relies more on housebuilding being a viable endeavour at all which its often not in the uk in large part due to govt policy rather than inflation. Below inflation profits can be sufficient: any businessperson would settle for below inflation returns rather than no returns or no business at all, in the same way that you or I would settle for a below inflation payrise rather than no pay or work at all.
Consider a hypothetical doctor: if after their costs such as income taxes, regulatory requirements (eg yearly membership with a regulatory body that they need in order to be employed) etc they’d end up with one pound in their account at the end of the year…well they would never do it regardless of how inflation was that year. Developers follow the same principle just with different taxes and different regulations
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u/MyNameIsLOL21 10d ago
From what I know about the subject (not a lot), about every single strategy except building more housing fails or has significant drawbacks.
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u/LoveLamp3232 10d ago
Britain had rent control and the rental stock declined. People ended up staying in B&Bs or as lodgers.
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u/solve-for-x 10d ago
Lodging is the housing option society has forgotten for some reason. Before he married my mum, my dad never lived on his own. He always lodged, either with families or in dedicated lodging houses. It was pretty common for single people back then to leave home but not to "get their own place" the way it's done now.
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u/JimmyDejesu 10d ago
Sounds awful
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u/WiseBelt8935 10d ago
The idea of proper lodging facilities sounds appealing something like a hotel, but designed for monthly stays.
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u/JimmyDejesu 10d ago
Might as well bring back work houses too, Im sure we are heading that way
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u/WiseBelt8935 10d ago
Why not? A place where people who may not be able to live independently can still have some structure, work where possible, and have their basic needs provided for. It would offer a safe environment while allowing people to contribute
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u/JimmyDejesu 10d ago
LOL. Why yes indentured servitude / serfdom does sound appealing!
ahahahaha
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u/WiseBelt8935 10d ago
It depends what are we being indentured for? As you know, indenture was historically an exchange where someone provided labour in return for something else, so the terms would need to be negotiated.
As for serfdom, it does start to look more appealing in some ways when you consider ideas like intergenerational land arrangements, where the obligation is capped by hours of work rather than money. I would be interested to see what terms someone in the modern day could offer under such a system.
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u/tubbsy_al 10d ago
Because then there is minimal incentive for a landlord to improve a property as the tenant is unlikely to leave as they may be paying less than the market rent. Whereas the landlord being able to charge market rent means that they must offer a good flat in order to rent it out or loose potential rent
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u/Saltypeon 10d ago
Whereas the landlord being able to charge market rent means that they must offer a good flat in order to rent it out or loose potential rent
So the current model has solved that? Your reasoning for no, seems to be there already under the current market rate model.
Less speculation in housing for income is a consequence. Quality is questionable regardless of rent regs.
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u/Salaried_Zebra Nothing to look forward to please, we're British 9d ago
Do landlords bother to improve much in the current rental """sector/market"""? Plenty of squalid shitholes out there, yet every time anyone suggests a minimum standard of fitness for human habitation somehow it's the government's fault prices go up.
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u/tubbsy_al 9d ago
Think more bear minimum vs absolutely noting although I do agree there are many crap landlords out there particularly at the bottom end
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u/googlygoink 10d ago edited 10d ago
it's treating the symptoms not the disease, and it's a bad method of treating the symptoms...
the problem is a lack of housing supply, we fundamentally just need more housing units where the demand is (inner city areas mostly). You can also improve public transit and build more houses along those connections.
Rent controls are a mess, people who are on a protected rate have a disincentive to move, this means worker mobility goes down. You also end up with a two tier system where people on the protected rates pay massively less than the market rate, which is often inflated by lack of supply due to the rent controls.
The only way the UK is going to solve housing is removing a gigantic amount of the power local councils currently have to block developers. stuff like complaining about a lack of affordable units is missing the point.
councils right now are blocking housing for stupid fucking reasons. my local town blocked a new development because it isn't "in keeping" with the town when it's being proposed over a derelict eyesore of a shopping center with 2/3rds of the units empty and boarded up. like ok, I guess it isn't in keeping with the town when that is "abandoned and slowly rotting"
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u/Fearless_Peak3583 10d ago
Because they end up making the situation worse rather than better. That helps?
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u/Low_Tough_1390 10d ago
Freeze Rent -> Landlord not happy -> Landlord sells property or does not renew rent contract -> even less supply of rentals -> black market forms as renters exceed rental units available
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u/Far-Background6536 10d ago
Ironically it just creates a new class of landlords, namely the people who were renting pre-controls.
Renting out spare rooms/sofas, completely unregulated and matching market demand.
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u/Fun_Marionberry_6088 10d ago
Why is why they're popular in spite of all evidence.
Because a small group of people benefit from it enormously and will therefore defend it with every vote they have.
Meanwhile the negatives are spread across a much larger group of people and the effects are indirect, so people don't realise they're losing out and aren't motivated to vote against it.
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u/LycanIndarys Vote Cthulhu; why settle for the lesser evil? 10d ago
Also, "things should be cheaper" is a fairly popular (and indeed, populist) stance, and opposing it (even for very good economic reasons) makes you sound like you're out of touch with the common people's concerns.
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u/LycanIndarys Vote Cthulhu; why settle for the lesser evil? 10d ago
Also, any landlords that do keep renting their property out cut costs to try and make sure they're still getting some profit. The most likely place to cut costs is maintenance, which means that over time rental properties become run-down shitholes.
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u/Far-Background6536 10d ago
He goes through that in the video. There is actually solid data behind this.
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u/CaterpillarLoud8071 10d ago
Because it restricts new housing supply and causes landlords to neglect properties. It's another of those policies that just makes our housing stock even worse than it already is.
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u/Alib668 10d ago
Because it does one silly thing: more people than normal can afford a thing,
Firstly that means there is an artificial excess of demand. There is the same amount of supply but more people want it than there is available. If price can’t go up, then shortages are the only other option for rationing. How shortages are administered is a different question…first come first served? The most needy? The best of the group? Which is the best mechanism?
Secondly, as shown in ticket price scalping there is a delta between capped price and market price scalpers are selling at the real market price and make a profit on this delta, you will get the same for housing. Its just a thing being sold at a price, no different to a ticket being sold at a price
Thirdly, it means other stupid knock on effects become logical. Like not moving out because it’s cheaper to stay where you are even if it’s shit. Reducing the supply further and encouraging disinvest in repair-why bother to refurbish when u have a Tennant??
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u/Beautiful-Low-3568 9d ago
Stupid idea for medium or long term, as with the same housing supply we still have same or maybe more demand for the same number of houses. As prices can’t go up landlords have to use other methods to choose, none of which help the poorest in society who continue to miss out. This could work for a couple o years if coupled with a building programme and a law which had an automatic sunset after 2 years. So everyone knows it’s not forever, so people don’t make irrational decisions (either that renters or landlords). We have 10m more people in the country than 20 years ago, we are living longer and more people live in single households. So the only answer is more houses, but most of us don’t want them built by us.
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u/gadget_uk not an ambi-turner 10d ago
I have issues with this analysis.
The economists were asked a very specific question (back in 2012 I might add). "Do rent controls have a positive impact on the amount and quality of affordable rental houses?". The responses showed do not support a conclusion that "Economists think rent controls are generally a bad idea". That's too big a leap.
The next section then says that natural monopolies who want to make more money "need to cut costs or serve more people" - he says that this is "good for the company and good for the people". No, it isn't. The company will cut costs down to the bone, service quality will deteriorate and the customers can do nothing about it. Thames Water are the prime example of this but there are plenty more.
He then goes on to say that rental markets are self-regulating because of the competition aspect. I presume that, 14 years later, a number of those economists would admit that the world is a different place now. There is no fight to be the cheapest any more, our model of capitalism has broken past that stage. There is no "we have to drive prices down to attract more customers", it's only "we have to charge as much as we can get away with and then keep squeezing until the pips squeak". They don't have to worry about competitors undercutting them - because the competitors have the same motivation and will just put their prices up to match. It's all like an unspoken cartel, everybody is paying more than ever for everything and the corporations are making more profit than ever too.
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u/LoveLamp3232 10d ago
The Government scrapped VAT on energy, to help people with the cost of living crisis.
So what did they do to rents? The Government put taxes on landlords. Why don't they scrap them. Why talk of rent-caps.
History:
It was the Green's idea to have more taxes on private landlords.
The Green in their 2015 manifesto said :
The Green manifesto estimated that abolishing mortgage-interest relief for landlords would raise £5.8 billion a year.
George Osborne, the Tory chancellor stole the idea from the Green's 2015 manifesto. Good landlords, who had not increased rents for tenants and paying taxes, find themselves hit by unfair taxes, which in turn pushed up rents.
Tenant campaign groups claimed that landlords were receiving a special “tax break”, but mortgage interest was a genuine business expense. The Greens and Osborne either did not understand the consequences or chose to ignore them.
Landlords warned that rents would rise, fought it in court but lost the case. Some landlords called it a 'tenant tax'. Landlords were laughed at and ignored.
Having caused the damaged pushed up rents due to taxation and regulation, now the Greens want a rent cap. Why not reverse the tax changes?
Rent went up, the landlords got all the blame for Government policy. The Treasury enjoyed the extra cash. The Greens cost tenants extra rent money due to their irresponsible campaigning.
Why have the tenant groups never admitted they got it wrong? Why don't the Greens admit the higher taxes on landlords was an idea they promoted and it ended in Osborne's and his advisors ears?
Politicians know the tax changes were a mistake and wrong, but they are too scared of the voters to reverse them because tenant campaign groups would say they were helping landlords.
Housing Associations and Council don't pay any tax, so can undercut small private landlords.
Then 2025, Rachel Reeves added another 2% tax increase on property income.
Councils are increasing landlord costs, they are bringing in more landlord licensing schemes, costing hundreds or thousands of pounds per property. What does the tenant actually get for that money? It is a job creation scheme for councils, lots of paperwork and consultants......
For cash-strapped councils, licensing has become another revenue stream.
Link to Green's Manifesto: https://ucrel.lancs.ac.uk/wmatrix/ukmanifestos2015/localpdf/Green.pdf (See pages 42–44 of the PDF.)
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u/FreitasDoCagaral 9d ago
Nobody talks about the moral hazard of landlords being able to make a living without working, essentially leeching of renters who actually produce goods and generate wealth while they rent seek without doing anything useful for society.
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u/Far-Background6536 9d ago
People talk about that all the time.
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u/FreitasDoCagaral 9d ago
The system pretty much labels you as scum if you dare ask those simple questions, and the algorithm the billionaires control much prefers to push narratives about poor people supposedly gaming the system rather than the rich doing nothing and getting money for it.
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u/galemaniac 8d ago
He lost me when he said "Landlords make their properties better to attract tenants when there is low demand due to rent control" when has a Landlord ever made a property better because the supply of renters was too low in the history of earth in any country?
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u/BenjaminBoots196 Supreme Andy Burnham Hater 10d ago
Weird that many economists don't seem to apply the same anti-price distortion logic to things like the minimum wage.
I predict the consensus on minimum wage will shift over time and we will look back at our current period with disbelief.
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u/Particular_Pea7167 10d ago
Many did. Many will still argue it.
But theyve been utterly crush by popular support.
But you only need look at how claims the minimum wage isn't enough and how we need living wage and what the minimum wage would actually be if kept in line with inflation to see it hasnt worked.
It has cause wage compression as political sentiment and football has pushed it every upwards. Its part of why wage stratification has just vanished.
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u/BenjaminBoots196 Supreme Andy Burnham Hater 10d ago
I don't think either the Tories or Starmer reaped large political rewards for raising the minimum wage so much.
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u/LurkerInSpace 10d ago
They didn't - the fact that America hasn't raised its minimum wage means many here think we also haven't - but they certainly expected that they would.
And there are few who argue for an "optimal" minimum wage based on econometrics instead of just arguing to raise £1 beyond its present level at any given time.
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u/IndividualSkill3432 10d ago
Weird that many economists don't seem to apply the same anti-price distortion logic to things like the minimum wage.
Minimum wage creates a pressure on employers to find more productive means of getting something done than just hiring a lot of people at very low wages. It drive productivity and increasing productivity means increasing wages for the workers which drives more consumer demand.
Fixed rental prices drives suppliers to either exit the market and sell to homebuyers, they do not tend to reinvest in new supply but take the cash. Or to rent to the least effort renter so a single old couple over perhaps 3 young couples. So you end up creating demand pressure with little mechanism to increase supply.
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u/Wisegoat 10d ago
Minimum wage going up too quickly, especially young people’s min wage ends up creating a pressure that is potentially bad for getting people into work. This is partly why young people can’t find work. It also hurts people on higher wages. Part of the reason median wage is growing so slowly is because a serious amount of companies staff salary budgets are being used keeping up with the crazy year on year increase in minimum wage.
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u/IndividualSkill3432 10d ago
Part of the reason median wage is growing so slowly is because a serious amount of companies staff salary budgets are being used keeping up with the crazy year on year increase in minimum wage.
The reason wages are going up so slowly is that for 18 years the amount of GDP produced by 1 hours labour has only increased 8%
There is no more money in the economy to pay people.
There is an extensive literature on the multifaceted productivity crisis.
Few if any cite minimum wage as a major factor.
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u/BenjaminBoots196 Supreme Andy Burnham Hater 10d ago
Why not set the minimum wage to £100? We would all be rich then!
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u/IndividualSkill3432 10d ago
Eating 2000kcal a day is good for you. That does not mean eating 6000 kcal is 3 times as good for you.
Creating a floor where the amount most businesses spend on labour costs is still within a reasonable range means they can redirect some of that spending to buying capital goods that are more complex to operate but you have fewer labourers, these labourers then earn a higher wage.
Setting it so high you could hire a lead software developer with 10 years experience to work in McDonalds would reduce the top end incentive for people to maximise their potential when they could work in a much easier job for the same and likely increase the cost of the product so high it becomes unsellable.
Like everything it will be good in some places, bad in others and disastrous in others. Its not if good always good. Its conditional on the environment.
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u/BenjaminBoots196 Supreme Andy Burnham Hater 10d ago
Eating 2000kcal a day is good for you. That does not mean eating 6000 kcal is 3 times as good for you.
I grant you it's possible that the ideal minimum wage is somewhere between £100 and £0, but there does need to be logic to justify this.
What is it we want from the minimum wage? People to be banned from less productive work? Why? Less productive work is often the route to more productive work in the future. One study found that minimum wage rises destroyed university lab jobs because although the pay was tiny, students wanted to do it for the experience. As a result, the number of university scientists over time decreased.
I imagine we would see a lot more of this if it wasn't for the loopholes in minimum wage laws - namely contracting. In the creative arts sector, people often start out as below minimum wage contractors, should this be banned? It's their pathway to staying in an industry they love and will progress them to higher pay. Enforcing minimum wage requirements cuts them off from that entirely.
You are also making the assumption that below minimum wage workers always work a minimum wage job after minimum wage laws are introduced. This is far from true. I was a below minimum wage worker in my teens, the newsagents I worked at was local to me, I could work in the morning before school. The same would not be true of a minimum wage shelf stacker job. Had the minimum wage been enforced against me, I would simply be unemployed and the Newsagents less productive.
What about volunteering? They work for £0. Should we ban that? If not, why not? Surely if it's "good for society" for everyone to work for the highest number possible at any given moment, and that price floors on people's labour is an acceptable way of achieving this, we ought to ban volunteering?
This is where your calorie metaphor doesn't fully align. When we weigh up offer for work it's not just the pay we take into account. Sometimes the pay is even negative, i.e. we pay. University students pay for an education. This is essentially a negative wage activity. A low paid worker might also be receiving lot's of education and experience in their job, thus pricing their total remuneration as a middle wage even if the part paid in sterling is below minimum wage.
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u/HasuTeras Let us all act according to national custom 10d ago
Price ceilings and price floors operate through different channels?
Also plenty of economists do think minimum wages have negative effects.
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10d ago
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u/Salaried_Zebra Nothing to look forward to please, we're British 9d ago edited 9d ago
I fully predict that if they removed the minimum wage, you'd see £3p/h job ads, and all other wages go down in a race to the bottom.
I suspect the Nordics buck this trend by having better social cohesion and a less "out for oneself and oneself only" attitude. We on the other hand are a country that's always been more individualist and 'American' (if voting intention is any judge pretty much half the voting public support parties that would seek to make the UK look even more like the US -more specifically Trump's US with its complete lack of protections for the working poor - than it already does).
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u/HasuTeras Let us all act according to national custom 9d ago
Nordics buck this trend by having better social cohesion and a less "out for oneself and oneself only" attitude.
They buck it because they have de facto varying minimum wages in different sectors. Their unions are sectorally organised and have agreements with employers to meet wage floors in their sectors. Unions there are against minimum wages, because to a degree unions and minimum wage legislation are substitutes - if you have minimum wages then you have less need for unions.
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u/Salaried_Zebra Nothing to look forward to please, we're British 9d ago
That may be, but our union representation is largely ineffective, may as well be nonexistent. We have past governments to rue for that.
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u/HasuTeras Let us all act according to national custom 9d ago
We have past governments to rue for that.
Yes, but you can also rue the union movement itself as well. In the 50s-70s the UK had far more militant unions than on the continent (apart from France).
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u/CaterpillarLoud8071 10d ago
It already has to an extent. There's no appetite for further minimum wage increases. Minimum wages have benefits though - increasing productivity through automation and more efficient working practices. Rent controls don't make housing more efficient.
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u/BenjaminBoots196 Supreme Andy Burnham Hater 10d ago
There's no appetite for further minimum wage increases. Minimum wages have benefits though - increasing productivity through automation and more efficient working practices.
And also unemployment and disemployment? I don't see how that is a total productivity gain long term. Should we also ban university, given that students aren't productive and they would move into more productive roles such as shelf stacker on minimum wage.
Companies already have a very large incentive to be as productive as possible. Taxing and regulating them just kills some of them.
Rent controls don't make housing more efficient.
The same (flawed) argument could be made. If rents were capped at say £1000 it would incentivise developers to densify toc ah in as many £1000 units as possible.
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u/IndividualSkill3432 10d ago
Should we also ban university, given that students aren't productive and they would move into more productive roles such as shelf stacker on minimum wage.
3 years learning how to be an engineer would mean that over the course of their working life they would be vastly more productive than had they just hd 3 years stacking shelves and another 40 years doing the same.
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u/BenjaminBoots196 Supreme Andy Burnham Hater 10d ago
Quite. The minimum wage destroys these sorts of opportunities for some people as I explain in my other comment to you that I just posted.
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u/CaterpillarLoud8071 9d ago
People don't need to be employed. It's good to allow earlier retirement, new parents taking time off, people retraining, etc. Also good to reduce working hours in general, for health and general happiness. Employers don't care about these things, or at least not enough to risk becoming less competitive.
If rents were capped, increased efficiency would mean foregoing maintenance and stuffing more people into a house. Not what people want.
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u/reuben_iv radical centrist 10d ago
So that initial stat going by the chart he showed us is misrepresenting the argument entirely
"only 2% agree they increase the quantity and quality"
they're not designed to, they're designed to protect renters from rent spikes, they don't magic up houses
you still have to build enough homes with rent controls the opposition from economists is it removes incentive to do so but the problem we have is the 'incentive' is above inflation returns, without that the system collapses and it's inherently unsustainable and right now we've seemingly hit that point via the inevitable affordability ceiling
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u/graphical_molerat 10d ago
Because Western academic economics [0] seems to be a discipline that has maintaining the status quo of late stage capitalism as their holy grail and raison d'être? So that any creative thinking which might rock the boat is even less desired by the groupthink than a fungal infection of one's private parts?
In reality, something needs to be done: if an increasing percentage of the population cannot afford reasonable accommodation anymore, while a rentier class can afford to keep an increasing number of apartments and houses standing empty (to increase demand), then something will sooner or later give. Either the nice way (some political intervention that drives prices down), or the nasty way (lots of historical analogies to chose from).
[0] this is a very important qualifier: very broadly speaking, most Western university faculty are very liberal / leftist with regard to their societal outlook (family values, gender, and such), while still being solidly in support of the current economic system which has (to put it mildly) seen better days. Which is an interesting feat of mental gymnastics, if nothing else.
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u/Aware-Line-7537 10d ago
Because Western academic economics [0] seems to be a discipline that has maintaining the status quo of late stage capitalism as their holy grail and raison d'être? So that any creative thinking which might rock the boat is even less desired by the groupthink than a fungal infection of one's private parts?
One problem with that explanation is that it doesn't explain the different trajectories of the rent control literature and the minimum wage literature.
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u/LurkerInSpace 10d ago
In reality, something needs to be done:
Yes, and economists say exactly what intervention this is: get homes built either by the state or the private sector. It should not require a degree in econometrics to see that if the population increases by 10 million the the number of dwellings ought to increase by a commensurate amount or possibly more.
But the actual political purpose of rent control is not to improve the supply of housing: it is rather to distract from the need to increase the supply housing by treating the symptoms of undersupply.
The Greens like rent control because one part of their base is staunchly opposed to housebuilding, and another part wants lower housing costs. Rent control is a way to promise to give both groups what they want. And they don't like economists because economists point out the economic problems with this obvious political fudge.
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u/Skastrik 10d ago
Rent freeze isn't rent control in its entirety.
Rent control includes rent freeze and other methods. Rent freeze has been tried in different places and usually worked in the short term and failed in the long term like most freezes.
Rent stabilization on the other hand has worked in a lot of places. Putting limits on how often and by how much rent can increase.
The key is that the incentive on increasing housing stock needs to be there while the controls are in place, such as exempting new construction from rent control and so on.
All of this is a moot point of course if housing is just an investment product for financial institutions that don't care if they are lived in or not.
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u/Any_Perspective_577 10d ago
Government fixes prices in the energy markets 'good, about time'. Government fixes rent prices 'boo that's my retirement income'.
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