Comments by "Gabe" (@gabetalks9275) on "National Rent Control? It's Closer Than You Think" video.

  1. Rent control will actually make the housing crisis worse. San Francisco tried it back in the 90's, and instead of it lowering rents, the landlords bulldozed the homes after the residents left and replaced them with luxury housing to make up for the lost profits. So the solution must be to ban investors from buying up a certain percentage of the housing market, right? Unfortunately, that doesn't work either. Rotterdam recently tried that, and while it increased the homeownership rate, it decreased the rental supply, causing rents to skyrocket. In other words, both attempts to limit landlords and investors made gentrification even worse. The lobbyists are right here. This is an issue of supply. Our zoning laws make it illegal to build affordable, mixed-use, missing middle housing in 75% of the country, manufacturing artificial housing scarcity, and thus, a bidding war for the limited supply. Investors gravitate to the landlords that make the highest profits, so if you manufacture artificial housing scarcity, the landlords will increase the rents because the scarcity makes the housing more valuable. The landlords and the investors are simply reacting to the crisis caused by our zoning laws. These activists have no idea what they're really bringing upon themselves. They're self-sabotaging themselves and they won't realize it until it's too late. The true key to fixing the housing crisis is banning single-family zoning in favor of transit-oriented development, banning parking minimums, and replacing our current tax system with a land value tax. Establishing a land value tax would also force landlords to actually take care of their property because being taxed for a building that's falling apart would be a net loss for them.
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  2. Rent control will actually make the housing crisis worse. San Francisco tried it back in the 90's, and instead of it lowering rents, the landlords bulldozed the homes after the residents left and replaced them with luxury housing to make up for the lost profits. So the solution must be to ban investors from buying up a certain percentage of the housing market, right? Unfortunately, that doesn't work either. Rotterdam recently tried that, and while it increased the homeownership rate, it decreased the rental supply, causing rents to skyrocket. In other words, both attempts to limit landlords and investors made gentrification even worse. The lobbyists are right here. This is an issue of supply. Our zoning laws make it illegal to build affordable, mixed-use, missing middle housing in 75% of the country, manufacturing artificial housing scarcity, and thus, a bidding war for the limited supply. Investors gravitate to the landlords that make the highest profits, so if you manufacture artificial housing scarcity, the landlords will increase the rents because the scarcity makes the housing more valuable. The landlords and the investors are simply reacting to the crisis caused by our zoning laws. These activists have no idea what they're really bringing upon themselves. They're self-sabotaging themselves and they won't realize it until it's too late. The true key to fixing the housing crisis is banning single-family zoning in favor of transit-oriented development, banning parking minimums, and replacing our current tax system with a land value tax. Establishing a land value tax would also force landlords to actually take care of their property because being taxed for a building that's falling apart would be a net loss for them.
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