alt Hacker News>> If this - "High-income job losses are cooling housing demand" is true, doesn't this mean UBI would never work?
I've even see a rent controlled apartment in manhattan being used as a storage unit !!!
>> If this - "High-income job losses are cooling housing demand" is true, doesn't this mean UBI would never work?
I've even see a rent controlled apartment in manhattan being used as a storage unit !!!
Central to the challenge of UBI and housing costs is the law of rent. UBI could work if all its redistribution was not immediately captured by landowners. There are ways to make that possible.
Rent controlled apartments being held by tenants no longer using them as primary residences is pretty common. A famous case of this was Cleve Jones in San Francisco who tried to make it a huge political deal when his landlord raised his rent to market because he was 1. living in Guerneville full time and 2. subletting the apartment. The media environment is one where it's ok for a master tenant to be a de facto landlord and make money on real estate, as long as it's not the landowner themselves!