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Comment by jychang | Hacker News Reader

The comment is phrased in the greater context of the public discussion about housing, in general. Not the specific information of the article.

You know, like how a discussion about war might reference the various recent wars that everyone knows about; it's not limited to just the content of the article.

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But it didn't reference anything, it stated political opinions like they were confirmed facts, provided zero evidence to support those assertions, and completely ignored the ways in which the article provides counterevidence.

They aren't saying affordable housing isn't needed. Just that the method for making housing affordable shouldn't be trying to make the current housing supply cheaper.

And from this is where you get "rent-control is a terrible idea". Essentially: trying to artificially drive down housing prices in any way is generally inadvisable if you can just build more housing.

Sure that's technically an opinion, but it's one based in facts, and it certainly doesn't have "zero evidence".

https://www.brookings.edu/articles/what-does-economic-eviden...

That's a pretty generous interpretation that requires you to believe rent control and building housing are diametrically opposed to each other.

rent control dramatically decreases the incentives to build and in many cases makes it impossible (read uneconomic) to do so

Blanket statements like this is the point of many of the above replies, it’s not a true statement with evidence. All rent control does not reduce the number of rentals, “more restrictive rent control”[1] [2] does. These nuances are important in the conversation.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S105113772...

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4904928

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