There is someone who values the apartment more than you do who can't live there, perhaps denying them the chance to be closer to their job or family. Also, you have less economic incentive to take in a roommate, thus denying another category of potential occupant.
In a rent control system, there are winners and losers. I'm happy that it has worked out well for you, but the survivor bias needs to be pointed out.
At least with market rate renting, there is always inventory. Hoping you are in a lucky enough minority to find an apartment doesn't seem like sound policy.
I get incredibly annoyed when I read anglo hottakes on housing these days.
It's a solved problem in other parts of the world, but it doesn't fit the market ideology, so it gets ignored.
- The state does not own much land in US cities. So that means buying existing properties at great expense and demolishing/rebuilding at even greater expense.
- The "veto" ability for existing residents to oppose new projects in the US is incredibly strong. Even existing public housing residents will oppose new ones built near them.
- Construction costs are unnaturally high in the US for a variety of factors - municipal governments can't seem to get out of their own way when it comes to zoning requirements and etc.
For California, they ended up paying $1 million dollars per unit! Much more than they would have just buying existing properties for individuals.
I don't think it's a problem of "market ideology". I think it's easier to prescribe it as a general policy failure. Vienna has a set of favorable circumstances that are not easily duplicated to other urban areas, and places like China can just ignore legal rights of their citizens to build whatever they want.
I would have been priced out of my hometown a decade ago if this apartment which I found on Craigslist didn’t happen to be rent stabilized.
We have learned the hard way that trickle down economic arguments sound eminently reasonable on paper but don’t deliver on their promises if implemented. I don’t believe for a second that “this time it’s different!” when we apply it to real estate.