@todayilearned Well more importantly it's a sign that the restrictions on renting out these apartments make them unavailable to people who need housing.
We should really rethink rent stabilization with examples like this.
When government restrictions make it costly to provide housing, we need to rethink those restrictions.
@volkris @todayilearned you need to eat broken glass if you think this is a government problem, and not a private ownership problem.
@MisterWanko It literally is since as it says given the government restrictions on renting out the apartments they are pushed towards keeping them empty.
Those restrictions can be dropped any day and Lord knows the landlords would love to take in income from renting them out.
So any day of the week, let's have those restrictions on renting dropped.
@volkris @todayilearned take the apartments away from them and the artificial scarcity goes away. the greedy fucks deserve to suffer.
@MisterWanko they're not taking apartments away from them.
There was no them to have the apartments taken away from.
But if you would like an apartment and you would like to rent it at the market rate, here's the city council stepping in and telling you you can't.
Yes, that is a government problem. And at any moment government could remove that barrier and let you rent the apartment.
Until then, the government has created a situation that promotes vacancies.
@volkris @todayilearned it's a government solution to an artificially high rate. i like the government interference in markets and believe it should be enforced with capital punishment.
That gets it exactly backwards.
From what the article says, people value apartment rental enough that they'd naturally pay more for them, and owners are willing to rent at those prices.
So the higher rates are natural, reflecting the value of housing.
The problem here is that the government solution stands in the way of people renting at those naturally higher prices, artificially constraining the housing market.
People value housing. These restrictions stand between people and what they want to rent.
@volkris nope and fuck you