Emailed in by MBK, from the comments in The Times:
Simon Shinerock:
OMG, will we never learn! Rent controls are proven not to work, forget theory, they dont work, they spell the end of the PRS.
The only thing that will solve the housing crisis is, and I know how hard this is for social scientists to grasp, to build more homes. Persecuting and demonising private landlords might be fun for some and distracting for many but it's not the solution.
The whole point of rent controls is to 'encourage' landlords to sell up to sitting tenants, hey presto, rapid increases in owner-occupation rates, that's what the UK did for most of the 20th century and it worked a treat.
Whether you see this as Commie landlord-bashing or achieving the Conservative vision of a nation of homeowners is up to you, the means and the end are the same. You simply can't have more owner-occupiers without having fewer landlords, it's very basic maths.
What is the point of building more homes? There's no evidence that it reduces rents or prices - and if it did, that could also be construed as "persecuting landlords" - or that it increases the number of owner-occupiers, as disproportionately many new homes are snapped up by landlords.
SS unfortunately does not say whether he is an owner-occupier, if he bought his house more than twenty years ago, he benefitted from rent controls etc, if he's a landlord he's a fucking self-serving hypocrite. Either way, he is an idiot.
Tuesday, 2 May 2017
Self-defeating argument of the day
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5 comments:
You forgot to point out that there is no "housing crisis", either.
He's right about rent controls meaning the end of the private rented sector, more or less, though. Whether you see that as a good thing or a bad thing depends on whether you think that all tenants are frustrated home-owners or not.
B. Which why LVT is a better way of 'controlling rents' than the bureaucratic opportunity presented by crude rent controls which will always be set at the wrong, i.e. non market, level.
Further because, as we know the LVT will capture only the location premium, not the landlords improvements there will still be a return to be made when satisfying the need for rental property by those that demand it -students say. Or itinerant works in construction.
Building more homes to accommodate an increased population - who'd ever have thought of that?
Accommodation growth within the boundaries of metropolises and towns is associated with increased rents over the long term.
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