[shawnee_]

> So, because you cannot trade apartments without spending significantly more money, there's a couple of hour-long commutes instead.

Here is where the analysis should happen. All of the "significantly more money" aspect boils down to transactional costs. Transactional costs in rentals will always, always be higher than transactional costs of ownership. Ownership's transactional costs get offset, (to only a small extent in the Bay area, but it is not nothing), by the equity the owner has accumulated.

Renters never accumulate equity to offset their transactional cost of "trading". The paper (and all of the anti rent control camp) constantly misconstrues lower-than-market rent as "savings". It is not savings; it's merely delaying the inevitable transactional cost of "trading".