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Originally Posted by Vallen Chaos Valiant
Minimum wage laws need to increase. That is all.
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That can't be all. The problem with just "minimum wages increase" is that you have more and more people on minimum wage as those catch up to their salary without them getting a raise.
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Originally Posted by Ledgem
If the rent is hiked to astronomically high levels, you're correct. Otherwise, "what the market will bear" is something that sounds good but provides little assurance that things will be kept sane or fair. Have you ever read one of my rants about the medical insurance industry, or the idea that "the market" sorts out the pricing of medical procedures? The basic premise is that "market forces" depend on equal negotiating power from both parties, the buyer and the seller. The specific power of the buyer is the ability to walk away from the deal if the terms (such as the cost) don't suit them. In medicine, the "buyer" (the patient) usually doesn't have this power. You can always elect not to have a procedure or treatment, but how much are parts of your body worth to you?
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So what happens if you artificially limit the rents? A handful of really lucky (or well connected) people get cheap housing at a convenient location. Everyone else still has to make do with the fact that there isn't enough good housing for everybody. And as people stop investing in real estate, the situation only worsens.
You want to give more power to the tenants? See to it more housing becomes available.
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If there were no landlords people would still need a place to live, and few people would be content with living in a tent. Individuals or groups would put up housing.
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It's not about what they're content with, it's about what they can pay for. You said it yourself: not everyone has the resources to become a homeowner. If they can't purchase a place secondhand, they can't buy a land and have a house built on it.