Then the land owners can push through whatever price-exploding rules they want as long as they can maintain that 51% by promising the Judas tenants that their rents will stay the same.
Furthermore, many renters believe that if more housing is built it will only be luxury housing that they couldn't afford anyway. Sure basic economics tells us that increasing supply ought to drive down prices for everyone, but at the individual level it's tough for people to make the connection.
Most people who moved into a neighborhood because they liked it don't want it to change. Enjoying where you live gets you labelled as a NIMBY though. It's easier to dismiss people if you give them a sweet nickname I guess.
> Sure basic economics tells us that increasing supply ought to drive down prices for everyone, but at the individual level it's tough for people to make the connection.
It should be telling that the "housing crisis" only exists in the most desirable places to live. I don't believe there is a practical amount of supply that can be built to satisfy the demand for housing in these places. The supply of upper middle class people who want to live in SV, Manhattan or San Diego is more than enough to make sure the poor can never afford it. In fact, the only people I ever see overly concerned with it are the middle class who are just on the cusp of affordability.
There's no housing crisis in Blythe.
Well, the question is how many of the host of worries US voters express (fear of XYZ evil-doers) are effectively just devices conveniently maintained and manipulated by media, consults and other moneyed interests.
Basic economics tells us that more supply lowers prices if everything else remains the same. Which it won't if the area becomes more popular.
"The assumption behind a demand curve or a supply curve is that no relevant economic factors, other than the product’s price, are changing. Economists call this assumption ceteris paribus, a Latin phrase meaning 'other things being equal'. If all else is not held equal, then the laws of supply and demand will not necessarily hold."
https://www.khanacademy.org/economics-finance-domain/microec...
The problem is even in that situation, the money of the home owner and apartment house owner speaks more loudly than the interests of the apartment dwellers.