Everything else is just nonsensical hand-waving people use in an attempt to justify why various schemes they favor are not working yet again.
Housing and land require further analysis due to inelastic supply of land, and huge restrictions on construction, both for political and safety reasons.
The biggest determinant of supply of housing is not the ability to charge more for it, but all the other challenges around building.
Here is an idea: Measure average rent per sqft. Put a 20% tax on rent above the average and use it to subsidize low income households. That way you tax wealthy tenants and subsidize poor tenants.
So it's not a "price control" as much as it is a control on rentierism, on existing rentiers taking unearned profits without working.
What there is is a lack of accommodation where people want to live.
Ultimately people need to be persuaded or given a good reason to live elsewhere.
So yes 2400 units is a start, but we need dozens more like it before we start to even come close to solving the shortage.
But not 50,000 new residents. Adding jobs doesn't necessarily mean more people, just more employed people.
Instead what happened is that new residents came to the city for high paying jobs and bid up the prices for local apartments. Basically a cruel game of musical chairs where low-income households were forced from their homes and into cheaper neighborhoods in the surrounding cities. (Those poor neighborhoods actually did grow in population faster than housing: people were forced to pack into overcrowded living conditions)
If you're curious about the numbers, over the last 40 years Cambridge added about one housing unit for every four new jobs
Rents go up, because price ceiling is removed. Idea is that in the future supply increases and you don't have to wear a suit when looking for a flat
And that is in addition to having the right supply curve in the first place. The potential shortage of supply created by a price ceiling may very well be irrelevant when supply decreases from other factors.
They don't have to. We've had price ceilings in the US in many places for over 60+ years without ever experiencing a shortage. (In my hometown, for example, education is price-capped, electricity is price-capped, water + sewer are price-capped, natural gas is price-capped. No shortages since the 1950s).
You just have to require reasonable regulations on the industry, and strictly enforce those regulations. Heavy Regulations + Price Ceilings is the magic combo for success, more or less.
Whereas the politicians won't care that a large percentage of would-be new residents for their city can't get in and have to commute. In fact, it's a perverse incentive: the locals love the lower rent, and there is no one to vote out the politicians that like rent controls.
Agreed, but this is true of housing as well. Housing "has to" work, or you end up with a huge commuting and homeless population (and the state of being homeless is effectively a crime in the US).
> In fact, it's a perverse incentive: the locals love the lower rent, and there is no one to vote out the politicians that like rent controls.
It's not perverse, it's a good incentive. Locals love lower rent from rent control, so the commuters who don't have it should be incentivized to also vote for rent control, and it's a great idea that should continue to spread. In a ideal world, every rental unit in the nation would be under a strict rent control (just like how power/water/sewer/natgas often is).
Not to mention, designing metro areas to require long commutes basically amounts to climate arson
Housing is completely different for many reasons, primarily:
1. Housing isn't provided by a single entity, it's a market that a majority of people will participate in. All of the things you listed are one-to-many, not many-to-many.
2. Difference in quality for different price points. You either have electricity or you don't. You either have natural gas or you don't. This is obviously not the case with housing where there are limitless price points and differences in quality. Unless you're suggesting that the government build all homes, this won't work.
3. You want the effects of the market to drive development and settlement. Manipulating the prices of NG has little consequence outside of providing a steady supply to the users. Manipulating the prices of housing won't allow development to fulfill market demands in price point, location, etc...