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Comment by TheSpiceIsLife | Hacker News Reader

You don’t reckon landlords of those upper-end mid-priced dwellings are asking more for rent every time a lease ends and a new one starts?

Because that does seem to be what’s happened in many cities.

One issue here is ideological: is housing a universal right, or is housing a capital good to be accumulated and regulated to be artificially scarce?

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Landlords charge more because people are still showing up to the open-house to rent. So of course they would increase rent. What you're describing is supply and demand. We lack supply. You can be sure the rent would go lower if nobody was at the door asking to rent their place. In fact, that's exactly what's happening right now with rent price in Toronto. Immigration is slowed, airbnbs visitors are gone and supply is up. Price are going down.

Of course it's a universal right. I don't think there's an idealogical gap between us on that front.

The other side of the "or" is a particularly egregious example of the excluded middle (separate from the missing middle housing shortage). The idealogical gap, if anything, seems to stem from willingness to believe that supply and demand affect housing affordability. I believe they do. The "regulations making housing artificially scarce" are exactly those inhibiting supply.

To that point and your question---of course landlords will always raise rent to the extent that the law allows it and the market will bear it.

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