Ideally, if one company charged too much for rent, the person living there could move to another place owned by a different company that would charge cheaper rent, in an effort to take business from the first company.
The issue arrives when monopolies control the majority of homes, but those monopolies can be broken much more easily if the cost of buying homes went down (from an increased supply of them) and the barrier to entry of new homeowners who want to rent went down. That would increase competition and would eliminate these monopolies.
unfortunately in reality that doesn’t happen in the market. you can force it though. the government can she should build as many houses as necessary, relatively high quality and super affordable if not free, especially since there’s no profit motive. make the houses owned by corporations pointless to the point that they’re forced to compete with a non-profit housing entity funded by the public.
and if they don’t do a good job just forcibly take them. housing must be a right and we should treat it as such.
Ideally, if one company charged too much for rent, the person living there could move to another place owned by a different company that would charge cheaper rent, in an effort to take business from the first company.
The issue arrives when monopolies control the majority of homes, but those monopolies can be broken much more easily if the cost of buying homes went down (from an increased supply of them) and the barrier to entry of new homeowners who want to rent went down. That would increase competition and would eliminate these monopolies.
unfortunately in reality that doesn’t happen in the market. you can force it though. the government can she should build as many houses as necessary, relatively high quality and super affordable if not free, especially since there’s no profit motive. make the houses owned by corporations pointless to the point that they’re forced to compete with a non-profit housing entity funded by the public.
and if they don’t do a good job just forcibly take them. housing must be a right and we should treat it as such.