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by throwaway5752 839 days ago
Do you think that well capitalized corporations (which, as non-humans, require no housing) are playing on a level playing field with regular people?

I think it's possible to formally model this, but if there are no caps on rent and no attractive alternative investments, it is always the efficient and rational move for a firm with excess capital to buy real estate because they can simply raise the rates until they get the return they want. People will require houses and you can see that in historically high multi-job holding statistics. People will work themselves to death to have a roof over their head.

In my life, larger scale single unit residential REITs are a new phenomenon, and the concentration of wealth that has happened this century has made single unit housing and rental and investable alternative asset class.

This is a really bad situation, it has too many parallels to feudal systems, or more recently, company towns in early 20th century America. This is a tragedy of commons dynamic that requires external intervention.

I'm worried you don't have a good handle on the number of houses and the excess lumber, copper, concrete, and steel for new properties and infra supporting them. That is just ignoring geographical scarcity, and the fact that not all geographies support building up. Just "building more housing" is usually not as easy as it is to sloganeer and blame nimbys.
1 comments
theragra 839 days ago
Requirements are too high, then.

For me it is a bit weird that 1. House must be fire-safe, asbestos-free, require eco heating system, etc etc. At the same time, nobody can afford to build a house (I think you need to be un top 5% in my country), and rent is really expensive

2. Same with doctors. You often not even get prescription easily, no medical advice, no own/custom medical devices etc etc, qt the same time a lot of people can't afford doctors.

I guess I am with libertarians on these issues. Imo, it is better to warn people and give them choice. Just plainly denying access to housing and medicine to poor people is plain evil.

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