If the government gets involved, the owners will just sell, making homeownership even more unaffordable and reducing rent options. What you want is less greed in the world, and that isn’t going to happen in its current state.
I’m not the one downvoting you, but I think this is where you might lose me - I agree that people will buy housing and rent it out if they can make a profit, and we’ve had landlords doing that basically forever. But if the government gets involved and owners sell, I don’t see how home ownership can be more unaffordable. Basically we have a hugely constrained supply of housing. If, say, there were 50 skyscrapers full of apartments that went up overnight in San Francisco that charged $1000/month, rents would have to go down everywhere else because there would be the introduction of so much supply that nobody would pay more than that cost (because that’s the alternative to where they’re living now). Obviously that’s a fantasy scenario, but the various governments (city, state, and fed) all are not doing anything to move towards that goal, which would create supply equal to demand. If current landlords sell, then that would drive prices further down, not up - you’re literally increasing the supply again, and also because they will be competing against each other to sell, it should drive down prices for those homes as well.
If the government gets involved, the owners will just sell, making homeownership even more unaffordable and reducing rent options. What you want is less greed in the world, and that isn’t going to happen in its current state.
I’m not the one downvoting you, but I think this is where you might lose me - I agree that people will buy housing and rent it out if they can make a profit, and we’ve had landlords doing that basically forever. But if the government gets involved and owners sell, I don’t see how home ownership can be more unaffordable. Basically we have a hugely constrained supply of housing. If, say, there were 50 skyscrapers full of apartments that went up overnight in San Francisco that charged $1000/month, rents would have to go down everywhere else because there would be the introduction of so much supply that nobody would pay more than that cost (because that’s the alternative to where they’re living now). Obviously that’s a fantasy scenario, but the various governments (city, state, and fed) all are not doing anything to move towards that goal, which would create supply equal to demand. If current landlords sell, then that would drive prices further down, not up - you’re literally increasing the supply again, and also because they will be competing against each other to sell, it should drive down prices for those homes as well.