Comments by "seneca983" (@seneca983) on "" video.

  1. One reason I'm skeptical of rent control is that it's not clear to me how is it compatible with efficiently rationing access to housing. If there's a high-demand area where more people would want to live than there's actually room for then something will inevitably limit access to housing in that location. Without rent control, price becomes the limiting factor. It's efficient at least in the sense that then people living in that area will presumably be the ones who (at least implicitly) think they will benefit the most from living there in dollar/euro/pound/whatever terms. This may seem unfair because it's not only a function of how much different people like that area but also of how much they have money. But is there a better way to limit access? If rent control forces the price of housing below such point them some other factor(s) must (also) limit the access to housing. It might be time spent queueing for an apartment, luck, connections, or the ability to seem like a good prospective tenant to a landlord (or simply actually paying above allowed rent by some illegal means). None of these seem a better rationing method than price. I've heard stories of people queueing for a home to rent in Stockholm for more than a decade.
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