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Since you want more housing... Trouble is what people really want is for nothing at all to change. Prices stay flat, no new housing is built, nobody gets evict

Since you want more housing... Trouble is what people really want is for nothing at all to change. Prices stay flat, no new housing is built, nobody gets evicted, no new people come to town. Sadly, since they want to have their cake and to eat it too, nobody seems to be approaching it from the POV of: We are up against an inexorable force of change; how do we channel that change in a way that is most acceptable? Instead they demand the impossible and lose all control of where that inexorable force is going to take them.

williamcotton 11y ago
I know us programers have a proclivity towards binary thinking, but these people aren't arguing for a world without any change, just a way to decrease the volatility of a housing market that fluctuates beyond human scale. Humans are big, blundering slow moving beasts at the top of the food chain. It takes us years to settle in to new homes and communities and find our footings. Having rents double over just a few years is just too much for most people to handle. Call it "rent stabilization", not "rent control" and it makes more sense. The goal is to slow the rates of change and make sure things are happening at human scale. Real estate, contract law and marketplaces are all human constructions and we shouldn't let them get the best of us.