I’m sorry to be negative because I agree with the general sentiment that society needs to stop treating “home value go up” as its primary retirement plan, and get rid of our allergy to social housing, but that first Guardian article about banning rental housing is just so bad on so many levels.

He says Britain doesn’t have a housing shortage because the ratio of homes to households hasn’t changed even as prices have gone up—but treating Britain as one big housing market is ridiculous, there have been massive shifts in economic geography over the last 5 decades. There is a housing shortage in the areas with well paying jobs and a housing surplus in the areas with no jobs. People should get to choose to move to a place where they can make a living!

He also says London’s population hasn’t changed in the last 50 years as prices have gone up without new housing being built—uhh no shit! If very little new housing was built in that period, how could the area’s population go up significantly? What happened instead is that, because demand rose and supply didn’t, the population stayed the same and the static supply went to the highest bidder. This is just mind-numbing economic illiteracy. Where does he think a population increase would go in London if London doesn’t increase housing supply?? The static supply is WHY the population didn’t grow! Literally exact same issue as NYC and the expensive parts of California.

He says developers would never build enough housing because it would drive down the price they can command—has this guy ever heard of the tragedy of the commons?? This is literally how markets work when there’s adequate competition. Econ 101. (And I’m not talking about fringy free-market-absolutist econ; Marx understood perfectly well that market competition drives down prices.) For a couple examples, Austin and Minneapolis have generated enough new supply to tank the price of rent. And imagine how ridiculous this argument sounds about anything but housing. “TV companies would never produce more TVs because that would bring down the price they can charge.” Oh wait…

It’s also totally left out (because there is no answer) how overall affordability would get better by getting rid of renting and only having owner-occupied housing. It’s the same amount of demand for the same amount of supply!

Finally, please just don’t take away my ability to rent! At my current place in life I don’t want to lock up a ton of money in real estate and be stuck in one place (much harder to move frequently due to transaction costs). Maybe later in life I’ll buy, but right now I want to rent (and invest my money in other things instead of a home). We need both kinds.

Ughhh. This author’s way of thinking is exactly why many of the most productive and ostensibly progressive cities (London, SF, NYC…) are prohibitively expensive, denying everyone but the rich the ability to live there. It’s easy to understand the right’s desire to send property values to the stratosphere (“fuck the poor, and fuck you too, I got mine”). But the left ties itself in these crazy knots to bring about the same result, hurting the working class we claim to care about, and it’s baffling.

Don’t overthink it, just build a fuckton of housing where there’s the most economic opportunity, both private sector (because central planning is notoriously not the best at creating enough supply) and social housing (because the market never works for literally everyone, and also because why not, more housing is good).