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Home owners are by far the majority, so battling home owners is an easy ticket to defeat.

• hollerith 2y ago
  Home owners are the minority in San Francisco, so why in your opinion are prices so high there?
  • MattGaiser 2y ago
    What does the voting population look like? Where I am in Canada, we typically do not prioritize canvassing neighbourhoods with more renters as they usually don’t vote. I imagine that tenant rights and rent control transform many renters into essentially homeowners for purposes beyond the asset itself. They also aren’t impacted by prices.
    • hollerith 2y ago
      I was told by a lawyer who does eviction cases that most jury members in SF are renters. My guess is that most who show up for jury duty also vote. There are consequences in theory for shirking jury duty, but my experience (from the early 1990s) was that the risk of actually incurring any consequences is very low.
• tokioyoyo 2y ago
  Yeah, I was about to write the same thing. I’ve been a lifelong renter, but have friends who converted from renting to owning (in Canada). Once you pay $1M+ for your place, you won’t vote for anyone who says they will lower your home prices. And since they’re the majority in every state, it just doesn’t work. Unless you have some sort of government that plans for “long term”, good luck. On the bright side, decreasing birth rates around the world will solve this problem by itself, if people can wait long enough. It’s the same in Japan. Tokyo house prices are going YoY because of foreign investments and growing population, but all other prefectures not so much (excluding special zones where they are building big semiconductor factories).