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Comment by goosedragons | Hacker News Reader

And that's why the housing situation is so different in other developed countries without rent control, right? Like look at the U.S, most states don't allow any sort of rent control and (check notes) they're uh, hmm, only short 7.2 million homes? Yup, no rent control sure is the fix. Definitely don't need governments stepping and mandating housing. Where has that worked? Singapore? Is that even a real place?

We need more private landlords with the freedom to randomly raise rents by any percentage they want. Surely that's the only way to get enough housing at affordable levels.

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There are a lot of different well-meaning policies that can fuck up a housing market by restricting supply. Rent control is just one of them.

This is like if you say that privatizing prisons is a bad thing and then somebody else comes along and says "But look at North Korea. They have state-run prisons and the prisoner conditions aren't any better. Clearly, therefore, privatization of prisons doesn't result in any bad outcomes for prisoners." Just a total non-sequitor.

He gave you 5 liberal countries and you literally had to reach for North Korea for your false equivalence?

The particular country wasn't the point. I was just illustrating the concept that just because Y exists in a place without X isn't proof that X won't cause Y. But that's kind of abstract, so I came up with an example that I thought would resonate intuitively with the person I was responding to. A framing where, if someone had tried the argument on them, they would immediately see the gaping hole without having to walk them through it. Obviously, I don't know goosedragons personally, so it was just a guess at what sort of example might make a good illustration for them.

The biggest problem with housing the USA is largely local zoning that artificially limits what can be built. Cities that have minimal zoning such as Houston, Texas have rents that have closely followed inflation only. In Houston there is literally no zoning. While this has some bad side effects in terms of ugliness it is highly affordable. Some progressive US cities, such as Minneapolis and Austin, are now liberalizing zoning to allow much more dense housing to be built in central areas long mass transit.

Houston does have extensive density controls

Check out Minneapolis vs St Paul building permits before and after St Paul imposed rent control. Same geographic area with roughly the same demographics.

All else equal, rent control discourages investment in housing.

If the government wants to create more housing supply themselves and charge some capped rental amount, I am cool with that. But please don’t tell private property owners what they can charge.

St Paul’s rent control was incredibly stupid, it’s not even indexed to inflation. The market was flooded with landlords selling duplexes annd anpartment buildings and developers canceled projects. I voted against it, and I’m currently renting.

St Paul had a more affordable rental market than MPLS, too.

Rent control is the antithesis of governments stepping up. It is the equivalent of sweeping the problem under the rug and declaring it solved. Go ahead and fix the problem.

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