As opposed to..? Letting the market handle it? That worked wonders about a decade ago.

As opposed to building more and denser housing.

Sometimes, you cannot build more housing, or denser housing, so you use rent control so tenants who do live there don't spend all of their income on housing, and some people don't get to live there (because of housing limits). If you turned San Francisco into Manhattan, and still had unquenched demand for housing while still maximizing every square meter of three dimensional space within desired geo bounds, what then?

"Build baby build" is not a silver bullet.

> Sometimes, you cannot build more housing, or denser housing ... If you turned San Francisco into Manhattan, and still had unquenched demand for housing while still maximizing every square meter of three dimensional space within desired geo bounds, what then?

Using Manhattan as your example of maximum possible density is... odd. Kowloon City [1] had much higher density and had the disadvantage of poverty.

I'm not saying that we should turn all residential areas into facsimiles of Kowloon City, but there is a ton of space between what currently exists - even in Manhattan - and that. I'm deeply skeptical that any place in the US or Europe has reached the limits of building more housing and is forced to look at other options.

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1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kowloon_Walled_City

"Build baby build" is a pretty good silver bullet - assuming the city is willing to keep up with infrastructure spending to support the denser housing (absolutely possible economically, but politically difficult) _and_ assuming the local populace doesn't throw whoever advocates for it out of office. Too often new construction is killed by NIMBYism (though, it seems just as often new construction blames NIMBYism for legitimate complaints about land compensation)... if you live in a city and treasure your quiet off the beaten path neighborhood... too bad.

>Sometimes, you cannot build more housing, or denser housing

A hypothetical possibility that doesn't hold true for any city that has enacted rent controls.

"Build baby build" is a silver bullet.

In New York City the subway is running at capacity. Building housing isn't enough, you also need infrastructure.

Brooklyn resident here. Plenty of room on the subway during my morning commute. Wish they would build more condos here so I could enter the market.

Manhattan uws has lower rents than comparable places in SF in my experience.

Transparent pricing and uniform unit metrics would work wonders

Market fragmentation and opaqueness helps keep prices higher

This can work in conjunction with building more and give more ways to curb excess

> That worked wonders about a decade ago.

What a curious anti capitalist sentiment.

First, I think most capitalists agree that regulation in some form is required, as totally free markets are inherently unstable. Second, this ignores the governments role beforehand in encouraging subprime loans and afterwards during the bailout. Third, it ignores the fact that by most measures, capitalism has increased the global standard is living too literally unheard of levels. In almost every part of the world, now is better than any other time in history to be alive. Not to imply that some things arent seriously wrong and require fixing, but let's give credit where credit is due and not throw the baby out with the bath water

Why would you link the leftist policy of rent control with populism?

You don't understand anything about either term you used.

Populism is not and has never been a right wing thing. Populism is the idea the the people should control society and their interests are more important than abstract concepts like the economy which benefit primarily the elite. The term has no political leaning.

Rent control is not a leftist policy. It's neoliberalism. Neoliberalism is not leftist in the slightest. It's simply a rebranding of right wing policy.

Rent control is populism.

Rent control is not a neoliberal policy - neoliberalism promotes free markets and de-regulation with which rent control does not align to.

populism: "a political approach that strives to appeal to ordinary people who feel that their concerns are disregarded by established elite groups."

ordinary people = renters

elite groups = rentier class

democracy = mob rule

When more than 50% of the populace are renters they have the power to enact rent control in democracies.

Life is short and problems are often immediate so in many cases people need short term solutions. I think what is really needed are approaches that provide short term relief while fixing the long term causes of problems.

Stop pretending populism is a bad thing. The people should be in charge.

Why is quality of life and levels of happiness so much higher in Europe then (EDIT: compared to other first world countries)?

Isn't Europe kind of pessimistic/ economically stagnant? I mean, pets are happy on the way to the vet as well (but what about after?).

I hadn’t realized you thought that. Will you then withdraw your claims in other threads that American style suburban sprawl is necessary for happiness and quality of life? That American cities far less dense than their European counterparts are full?

If I can’t have European sane labor regulations and universal healthcare, I’ll still take my suburban low density housing. So...no. I stick by my claims (Europeans have a different value system than Americans, which I argue is a substantial component as to why they’re happier with “less” than Americans).

Also, I am flattered (truly!) that our conversations have left a lasting impression wrt my opinion on American housing.

That really depends on where you're comparing Europe to...

The rest of the world?

EU tops rankings for quality of life and standard of living every year. Sprinkle in some canadian, Australian Japanese and new Zealand cities an there is your top 50.

According to Mercer, who conducts - 'The quality of living survey is conducted to help governments and major companies place employees on international assignments. The survey also identifies those cities with the highest personal safety ranking based upon internal stability, crime, effectiveness of law enforcement and relationships with other countries. In this case, Luxembourg is top, followed by Bern, Helsinki and Zürich, all equally placed at number 2.'

'Countries with cities commonly ranked in the top 50 include Austria, Switzerland, New Zealand, Germany, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Australia, Sweden and the United States. Vienna (Austria) has been ranked first for ten consecutive years.'

I mean, sure, Germany has more cities on the list than the US; but Germany isn't the EU. Most of the EU has zero cities in the top 50.

The US has zero cities in the top 30 of that list, not really supporting your argument. (EDIT, it is also amazingly US centric and still doesn't rate US cities higher, NYC is given a base score of 100 and other cities are essentially compared to it).

Germany isn't the EU? What?

EU has 30 of the top 50 places....US has 6...come on now.