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I'm curious what the federal government can actually do in this situation. Most private leases are contracts under state law, not federal law.

Cool, but also cap property tax increases as well. Mine have increased over 10% for the last 3 years.

And then roll it back to 2016 +5%

Oh neat, now if you can't afford rent (the issue) next year it will only be 5% more out of reach.

"politician expected to say that something we would want to should be a thing"

why is this news?

This shit never works out as simply as you expect it to. With any public policy change there are layers and nuance. If you restrict rent increases then every year you're gonna see the majority of landlords including the ones who do not increase rent yearly suddenly change course to always up the rent 5% per year, every year. Otherwise as a member of the ownership class who doesn't increase rent your are losing out on equity compared to those who do. Compound interest never catches up.

If you want to make renting profitable and homeownership obtainable for nearly everyone you need to setup a system where renters gain a share of ownership proportional to the money they put in. Make it so ALL renters eventually own the place they rent if they stay long enough. Ownership increases for every dollar spent towards rent. Evaporate the double dip appreciation for landlords and punish the income so that you gain money but at a slower rate than an index fund.

You also need subsidized lending for individuals who own no home. Possibly make it so 100% of rental income tax goes into a fund that provides mortgages to someone purchasing a primary residence when they do not own any current properties or are selling their primary residence to purchase another one (e.g. moving, not hoarding housing.) Make the application process for these mortgages prioritize families without any owned homes in their direct lineage (e.g. those with parents and children which do not own homes get a higher priority than the kids of wealthy homeowners.)

Something like this can bring homeownership to the masses and bring prices down as investment income from housing is no longer as valuable as other investments. Prices may still stay high, but subsidized mortgages would keep monthly payments affordable for those who qualify while minimizing profitability for hoarders.

Finally if you are still in love with rent control, then do it concurrently with a program like the above. Balance the scales.

Unless that also comes with a 5% raise every year, then it's not as good

5% raise cap is lame! way lower than wage increases! a 1000$ rent after 5 years is 1300$, which after 5 years becomes a 30 % increase

Him and his filthy rich Democratic politicians are so disconnected from reality that this seems to them like a revolutionary policy

So if we can elect like, any old fuck now, can't we just go even older and elect the corpse of mao or something? cause that's kinda the only way I see rent, and rent specifically, becoming a non-issue in the near future. This is like one of the main issues which is directly symptomatic of capitalism, and which keeps capitalism as a system directly propped up. I don't really see any long term solution to it that doesn't involve a lot of no longer having capitalism. Other capitalist countries still have this problem. It's only like, china and the former soviet union and apparently barcelona with superblocks which are still gonna be subject to market demands and rates, it's only those countries which are going to be constructing such an excess of housing that a good amount of it can remain empty, which is also the case here as well but with the caveat that we still have massive amounts of homelessness and the empty housing is basically just to increase demand on top of straight up not having enough housing even were we to construct mass housing projects.

I dunno, this is a pretty good encapsulation of why we are specifically incredibly fucked and how this incrementalism isn't going to work at all to address our current issues. We're cooked, lads. Get the titanic band to start playing the song or whatever.

God this is embarrassingly lame.

Not better to cap it at 5% of the property value?