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The Netherlands banned investor ownership of housing in 2022. It did not reduce home prices. New homeowners had higher incomes, were more often Dutch-born, moved shorter distances, and stayed longer than the renters whom they replaces. I do not think this was an equitable outcome.

Elizabeth Warren@warren.senate.gov

Democrats dropped a bill TODAY to stop private equity's housing takeover. Let's get this done.

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I'm sorry, I'm really unclear on "equitable outcome"? What standard is being applied here? With what controls? I'm not expert on holland or homeownership but if this is a reason to oppose the bill Warren tweets I'd like to try to understand.

What precisely counts as 'equitable' is of course the subject of reasonable disagreement. But "putting a finger on the scale to benefit a (better-off group) at the expense of a (worse-off group)" should probably fall outside of any reasonable definition of the term.

making it harder to rent out a house also means its harder to rent a house. the group of people who can buy a house are better off than the group of people who can rent a house. so the dutch policy benefited the first group at the expense of the second.

I'm starting to flirt with the idea that Democrats should do slopulism even if there's no benefits, as long as it's not substantially harmful. If we don't do slopulism, the Republicans will, and we'll get mogged when people decide that "no taxes on tips" is great policy.

Counterpoint: Then the populists move on to the next boondoggle like vacancy taxes or some other harebrained thing and you just expended effort and political capital for 2+ years to achieve nothing.

It feels like private equity needs to be regulated for a whole host of other issues but it doesn't seem like a solution for housing prices specifically (build more housing and make stronger tenant protections)

I'm just struck by the idea that people recognize that big corporations and private equity will behave badly if they have sufficient power, but in the housing market they have the market share of like, Cheerwine.

A lot of people really struggle with the idea that there's just not physically enough housing. If you have 10 people and 9 houses, someone's going unhoused. You can have the government subsidize the cost of all 9 houses down to 0, and the 10th guy is still sleeping in a ditch.

The homeless didn't drop out of the sky. They were evicted when they could no longer pay the high rents and mortgages. The investors will leave the properties vacant until they can get the rent or mortgage payments they want. Until then they can use losses for tax breaks.

We want to think housing is like like food, where thereโ€™s more than enough for everyone if not for extreme wastefulness. But there isnโ€™t. Itโ€™s a self-induced shortage, and we cannot address it unless more housing is built.

if we applied ag policies to housing, the government would pays developers to build as much as they can on any land they had and if there arenโ€™t buyers then the govt would pay the developer. Results in massive food surplus at low cost every year (albeit at the cost of taxpayer subsidies to farmers)

People desperately want a solution to high housing prices that does not require building new homes in their neighborhoods. No such solution exists. If we want lower rents and home prices, we need to build more homes in the places people want to live. Anyone who says otherwise is bullshitting you.

Well, we could have a system of gov permits for living in specific cities / counties / states, so if you want to move from a rural area to a more desirable city you need to apply for a permit and wait in line. /s

It's both a logical fallacy and a suffocatingly simplistic view of policy. bsky.app/profile/mike...

Mike Sandโœจ@mikesand.com

Regardless of the charged phrase, this is a logical fallacyโ€”false cause/affirming the inverse: "Because ban-> displacement, therefore no ban-> no displacement." No. "No ban" could mean instead of buying, native-born who want to buy that housing would be outbid, and then pay investors higher rent.

Asking sincerely, did the Dutch also build more homes? This may be a situation where we need to both ban private equity in the housing market and expand new builds.

The cheapest cities in the US (for housing) are the cities where the most housing was built (relative to demand). Why are we constantly looking for an answer other than the obvious answer which continues to work in the American cities where it's tried?