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Comment by mcv | Hacker News Reader

There are two options here: rent control, and the free market.

If enough houses can be built, and basic income is high enough to pay free market prices, then any landlord who asks too high a price, will price themselves out of the market because there will be other cheaper houses. But for this it's vital that the supply of houses is unrestricted.

Of course a landlord might bait and switch with low rent as you move in, and rapidly increasing rent once you get settled. That's simply something that needs to be banned. After you've moved in, landlords should only be allowed to increase rent by either inflation, or the average increase in new rent in the area. But preferably just inflation.

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Free market won't work. It doesn't work because you can't build enough houses. For the free market to work you'd have to build way more houses than people need because owning house without tenants is extremely cheap and you don't have to lower the rent (or sell it at lower price). You can just let it be unrented for quite a long time and still come ahead when tenant or buyer finally arrives.

I think you should just raise cost of owning additional houses so keeping them empty really hurts.

Rent control seems like government micromanagement that we want to avoid with BI.

Making empty houses more expensive through property taxes is absolutely an option. I think it's totally fair to reimburse the community for taking land away from the community to put an empty house on it.

My point is: there needs to be competition on the supply side in the housing market, to keep prices somewhat related to the real cost of the house. If this isn't possible, the government needs to step in. I hope to avoid that where possible, though it's certainly necessary to prevent landlords from raising the rent on people after they settled in a home.

The community didn't own the land, so didn't lose it; It's more accurate to say - the community still has to manage the land (e.g. policing, fire service) so property tax always needs paying, and should be relative to those services.

Private ownership of land does take it away from the community. The problem is that we've gotten so used to everything being privately owned, that we've grown blind to the possibility of land not being owned by anyone and belonging to everybody.

Land that isn't private is still owned by the government, and maintained by taxes. I wouldn't say public land is belongs to everyone, so much as it belongs to no one - there are limits to what it can be used for e.g. can I build a house on such land?

this thread is about UBI, which is currently impossible without new laws, so why not look at what could be possible with new laws regarding land?

Go ahead.

The community lost the land when it was doled out to the first private landowner, which may have occurred centuries ago.

Or when the first settler settled there and defended it, before which there may have been no persistent local community.

Are we not talking about modern society though?

> owning house without tenants is extremely cheap

Maybe higher property tax would work then? You need more revenue for UBI anyway.

I believe free market will work. I feel most around here keep imagining how UBI will affect the CURRENT housing market which is mostly tied to the proximity to jobs. In fact UBI will significantly change this market. UBI will, in theory, get people stuck near "job hubs" with extremely high cost of living (most of that being rent) to move to more rural areas. They will no longer be tied to commuting 1h each way to work 40-60h a week to work a dead end soul sucking job just to spend 50% of income on rent and finally just move somewhere more hospitable and conducive to bettering themselves.

And also, you CAN build new houses in lots of places that are not the current "city centers".

Housing cannot and will not be efficiently handled by the free market. It is a basic need. Noone will wait for a year before prices go down because landlord are now trying to outprice eachother. The response to overpriced housing is not "Eh, I'll guess I'll be homeless for a while", its "have no choice but to pay". Especially for something controlled by such a small portion of the population

You're right. I'm just imagining a world where there is sufficient supply of houses, and property owners will need the income that renting it out provides. It should never be profitable for them to sit on empty houses. Too often it still is.

I've moved from Australia (no rent control, laws heavily biased towards property owners) to Berlin (renter's paradise).

Renting property definitely should be treated as a business, done by companies, and heavily controlled by regulation to favour the tenants. This is how it's done in Berlin, and it works really well.

Treating property as an investment vehicle is actively harming society.

> That's simply something that needs to be banned.

That is banned. I don't know the limit but it's similar to what you describe. Landlords aren't allowed to raise prices by much per year. It still adds up, but by then you know to look for another place and have a year or two to do it.

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