[sascha_sl]

It's because the system is broken to begin with.

Landlords usually provide little value compared to what they ask for and for a lot of them, it's essentially passive income, an investment if you want, but one that is basic survival for others. The US should not be having a homelessness crisis. We have more empty places than homeless.

The same way I personally believe Nestle or anyone else should not be trying to commodify drinking water beyond the "utility" grade.

If you want an expanded look at this line of reasoning, I can recommend Thought Slime: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g2EWQ4v9wbA

[tuna-piano]

Thought experiment for you:

Evictions become much more difficult, maybe even illegal.

What happens to people who want to rent apartments?

[sascha_sl]

Goes right past my comment. I don't want apartments owned by people for any other than their personal use to begin with because the profit motive incentivizes bad behavior and is inflexible in handling situations like Covid.

[tuna-piano]

So you believe that buying a house should be legal, selling a house should be legal, but renting a house should be illegal? Or you believe all land+buildings should be government owned?

And you believe the government should have a monopoly on buying/renting houses?

And how would government renting houses be different than landlords? If the government wanted to give rent flexibility they can do it other ways besides owning the houses.

[sascha_sl]

I don't have all the answers, but the current system cannot continue and needs to find a way to treat housing more as a public or heavily regulated utility with no profit motive.

I'm also fine with incremental change. We can start by moving ownership of unused decrepit housing to a public body that transfers based on real occupancy. Essentially expanding adverse possession.