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consp • today at 9:47 AM • 0 replies • view on HN

Also in countries where rent control is a thing. About 20 years ago the government decided it was "good enough" and stopped nationally planned housing projects (which resulted in decentralized planning and mostly expensive, high profit, housing being build), 'motivated' the market by providing tax breaks (giving higher profit and less investment in non-controlled renting) and as a bonus taxed the subsidized housing market a flat rate on top (result: hardly any new construction or investment in subsidized housing).

Almost all measures since have been detrimental to new housing, great for real estate owners, extremely poor for renters and allowed house prices to skyrocket. None of these things are on their own and it's a more-or-less global thing but they've done a great job making it worse.

And as a bonus: this was projected to happen by the governmental planning agency and rejected as fearmongering.