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A comment on The World Is Run by People No Smarter Than You. Parent comment

Re:The World Is Run by People No Smarter Than You by ynx on Friday November 11, 2022 @02:37PM (#33565672)
Rent control can, and sometimes does work. However, it has faltered in recent years, in large part because property management companies are using software to aid in pricing rents as high as the market can bear (to the heavy detriment of tenants), and are willing to evict and retain an unconscionable amount of empty units if overall profits rise, even at the cost of human suffering, rather than keep tenants around.

The latest "Behind the Bastards" podcast "Part One: Why is the Rent So Damn High?" explores some of this, if you have the time and inclination to listen.

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Re:The World Is Run by People No Smarter Than You by WalterBright on Friday November 11, 2022 @03:02PM (#33566047)
> Rent control can, and sometimes does work

Only if you ignore the secondary effects, which are legion.

> retain an unconscionable amount of empty units

A secondary effect of rent control

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Re:The World Is Run by People No Smarter Than You by AstralStorm on Saturday November 12, 2022 @12:10PM (#33574940)
There are thousands of empty units around without rent control. People cannot afford rent in them.

"Secondary effects" - please educate us on what they are, and their magnitude.

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Re:The World Is Run by People No Smarter Than You by WalterBright on Saturday November 12, 2022 @01:09PM (#33575465)
There are 48.5 million rental units in the US. A few thousand empty ones is miniscule.
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Re:The World Is Run by People No Smarter Than You by ynx on Saturday November 12, 2022 @06:40PM (#33578383)
I guess to put a finer point on it: this isn't exclusively a market problem, and it's incorrect to reduce/redirect all forms of market manipulation down to 'rent control'.

Certainly rent control distorts the market unnaturally, but it does so in favor of tenants and human rights, and proportionally speaking, I don't think it's the biggest distortion by a long shot. The much larger distortion causing the market problems is the optimization of rent prices at the expense of human rights.

If the market is to be distorted, I personally would pick the one that prioritizes continuity of housing over the one that maximizes rent income over total units rented.

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