There are no easy answers, no silver bullets. We could cap rents, and limit the profit of rentals. We could limit the number of rental properties one company or individual can own. We could nationalize a bunch of housing. We could put more housing in community trusts. We could build more social housing. We could subsidize property owners who provide lots of high quality housing at below market rates to provide downward pressure on rental rates.

There's a lot of different levers we could pull, none of them solve the problem, all of them introduce other challenges. But we could definitely make a better system than we have today (for renters and individuals. Less so for landlords.)