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One typical arguments I see against rent cap is that it makes the housing availability situation worse, forcing people out of the city. But if say 40k new peopl
by cyphunk 11y ago
One typical arguments I see against rent cap is that it makes the housing availability situation worse, forcing people out of the city. But if say 40k new people move to Berlin in a year I see no reason why any form of market system wouldn't want to at least have some scarcity and keep things to 40k-1 max. What Berlin has seen over the past few years within a non-capped market is exactly this. 40k per year with only half that amount in new housing created [1]. My argument for cap is that if the market cannot make for sustainable living I think there is reason to consider cap, despite it meaning a bias on seniority in city.
http://www.inspiration-asia.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/Berlin-housing-demand-495x400.png http://www.inspiration-asia.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/B...
- icebraining 11y agoThat argument is incomplete. Why isn't the market providing enough new housing?
- pgeorgi 11y agoThere are already 10k people per square mile (incl. forests, recreation areas and water ways that are hard to get rid of without making Berlin completely uninhabitable). Per square mile of settlement area it's 24k people. (state statistics office) Berlin sits right in the middle of a swamp (one explanation for its name is that it's derived from a slavic word for swamp), so there are limitations to how high you can build without things falling over. If at all possible, the manhattan approach of going vertical is at least crazy expensive. There were 8744 new units built in 2014 (state statistics office). There are (according to the article) 40k new residents per year - assuming that on average 2 people share a unit, that's an annual requirement for 20k new units. My guess is that Berlin simply doesn't scale.
- cyphunk 11y agoI agree my argument is incomplete. to go further supposedly Chicago which has little to no renter protection appears to have one an average % of income for rent indexes for the US, and one of the highest availability indexes [1]. I do not have a complete picture of the circumstances in Chicago. 1. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-03-27/why-the-most-popular-cities-are-out-of-reach-for-young-professionals http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-03-27/why-the-mo...