[moksly]

The insane rent increase is a more “modern” thing in European cities. I put modern in quotes because it still goes back more than 20 years, but in many places rent hasn’t increased much for the people with old leases.

In some buildings the owners have found ways around the rules, like selling the building to investment funds with enough money to tear it down and build a new one. Or maybe made enough renovations to make larger rent increases legal, but some building owners seem content to just get the steady income without doing much about it.

The big rent increases mainly come from all the new or completely renovated buildings and those are mostly owned by large investment companies.

I personally hope we eventually get enough grip on our cities to tell those investors who are foreign to go fuck themselves and seize their buildings, but it’ll probably take some time until we get to that point. Or maybe it won’t, around 30% of the population supports it or something similar.

Yes, yes, I know this is communism and will bleh bleh bleh, but we can’t keep letting the wealthy herd the poor around like this and expect our society to remain positive about our democratic ideals.

[imtringued]

Well, you either tax the land to reduce its value to investors or you don't let people own land in the first place.

[R0b0t1]

No, you can prevent certain types of land ownership. Which is the second one, but it's more nuanced than "don't let people own land."

The real issue I think is that modern wages can't support the cost of new construction. If they could people would simply build more houses themselves.

[corpdrone2021]

I'm not sure it's fair to call telling foreign investors that they're not welcome to use your country as a rent farm is fairly called "communism." Until the rise of neo-liberalism that seemed to be a pretty core part of all economic populism on both the left and right.