> But it's not a problem created by business owners providing housing to poor people (or ones evicting poor people who cannot pay). It's a problem created by st

> But it's not a problem created by business owners providing housing to poor people (or ones evicting poor people who cannot pay). It's a problem created by state and municipal governments that make it illegal to build dense housing, housing on small lots, housing that isn't to code, etc. I concur -- awful zoning laws are a root cause of the undersupply and overpricing of housing for poor people. Criminalising the sheer act of dwelling (or renting to people who dwell) in any sprinklered building is utter depravity, especially given how many people are homeless or live in warehouses that are deadly firetraps. However, currently-existing residential landlords/property-owners have extremely strong reasons to preserve the currently-existing legal regimes that limit housing supply. After all, if it suddenly becomes legal to {build,live in, rent out} dense housing / housing on small lots, there'll be people who indeed will do so, which will increase supply and lower prices. That's the profitable element in the current state of affairs -- all the current landlords who can charge higher than they would be able to if the government wasn't making lots of potential competition illegal.