Market capitalism is destroying us, our homes, and literally our only habitat.

Their guard gates are mostly decorative. We could save our species and the habitability of the planet.

Instead some think we can petition the government they've fully owned for half a century to mitigate the harm they bought our government to commit with abandon, lol.

I mean, they're sort of right.

If there's 150,000 identical homes for rent in an area, and 200,000 people/couples/families want to live there, then 50,000 are going to be shit out of luck.

The going rate is going to be the maximum that the 150,000th person out of those 200k is prepared to pay.

How do you fight maths?

Build more houses. Less competition means lower prices.

Social housing schemes.

Work from home being a right so you don't end up with everyone needing to work in a massive city to make ends meet.

Tax landlords. They're already charging the most the market will bear, and taxes would mean they can't just snap all those homes up and offer them for rent. If buying and renting homes is a valid business plan, then the tax isn't high enough.

This fundamentally misunderstands the way that the market works.

If you have 1000 people trying to rent a 1br apartment, and there are 500 1br apartments on the market, then yeah, the price is going to go up, because there's more demand than supply. But supply is constrained by outside factors, like zoning, and neighborhoods that don't want to ruin their "character" be someone building high-density housing next to their cute, retro bungalow. Sure, you can build your apartment complex out in BFE, but no one wants to rent a place out in BFE because now they can't get to their job in a reasonable amount of time, and have to drive rather than take public transit (or walk, ride a bike, etc.). Plus, that creates sprawl.

If you really want more housing, blaming landlords--including corporate landlords--isn't going to fix it. Blame the cities that won't allow proper high density housing, blame the NIMBYs.

I don't know where people think that more housing comes from; someone has to put up the money. I'm fine with it being the state, but someone has to front the money in the first place.