It's not just landlords, no. Some people want to force urbanization, so the government creates urban growth boundaries to limit sprawl. But then many of the p

It's not just landlords, no. Some people want to force urbanization, so the government creates urban growth boundaries to limit sprawl. But then many of the people inside the boundary don't want high density housing near them, so they support zoning to keep it away. And mostly I don't think landlords are the ones leaving units empty -- it's investment groups that don't want to have tenants in the first place, they don't want to be landlords, they just want an asset that grows in value. There is a very legitimate supply problem, and blaming landlords won't solve it. They only have the leverage they do because the government gave it to them. We could make the gov't back off if we wanted to, but by and large we don't seem to want to.