OK I'm not a landlord/capitalist apologist but it sure does make sense to me that rents rise in part because there are way more people that want to live in an a

OK I'm not a landlord/capitalist apologist but it sure does make sense to me that rents rise in part because there are way more people that want to live in an area than available units. For example Downtown LA and Koreatown are putting up large apartment buildings like crazy, because the zoning allows them to, and rents have not increased nearly as much as other popular LA areas that are mostly single-family zoned, such as Santa Monica. This is why Minnesota and now recently California basically upzoned the entire state, because upzoning with local ordinances neighborhood by neighborhood is almost always defeated by NIMBYs, which are generally a combination of of local homeowners and local small-time landlords. Don't forget that a huge portion of US landlords are "mom and pop" landlords, which have a massive portion of their net worth wrapped up a handful of rental units and don't have the capital to build net new units. These people are more economically opposed to new housing than a large developer who can stomach the capital outlay for a new building. When they are allowed to developers can profitably build dense housing, which produces net new units into the market, which helps combat rising rent.