After New York City’s race for mayor catapulted Zohran Mamdani from state assembly member into one of the world’s most prominent progressive voices, intense debate swirled over the ideas at the heart of his campaign.
His critics and opponents painted pledges such as free bus service, universal child care and rent freezes as unworkable, unrealistic and exorbitantly expensive.
But some have hit back, highlighting the quirk of geography that underpins some of this view. “He promised things that Europeans take for granted, but Americans are told are impossible,” said Dutch environmentalist and former government advisor Alexander Verbeek in the wake of Tuesday’s election.
Verbeek backed this with a comment he had overheard in an Oslo café, in which Mamdani was described as an American politician who “finally” sounded normal.
Rent freezes are ineffective over here in Europe as well. They don’t create more housing, sometimes the opposite. There are lots of unintended side effects like having to pay bribes to get a contract at all.
There are several meta studies and studies on this, you can look up.
Rent freezes are only good for those who already have an affordable housing. It doesn’t solve the systematic issue the slightest.
They are not intended to create housing, they are intended to keep those who are already living in the area from being driven out by rising cost of rent.
That’s a consequence of too little availability, not of rent freezes.
Which should be the top priority before enabling more migration into an overheated housing market.
i don’t think a market can be “overheated” (except if you’re referring to a bubble). what does that even mean?
https://iea.org.uk/media/rent-controls-do-far-more-harm-than-good-comprehensive-review-finds/
More migration comes either way, if you control rents or not.
You cite neoliberal garbage that has a childish strawman argument against a socialist on its main page. There are plenty of good arguments to make in favor of rent control that are biased the other way, the one that is not subservient to capitalist market forces and interests.
Jacobin has many articles in favor of rent control, written by economists that have looked at the data.
And here is another one that looks at multiple studies and finds that the negative effect on supply are mixed and marginal at best.
There’s always a market with market forces.
If the legal market is completely state controlled, then the black market is still around. Corruption, bribes, and political connections then become the price to pay to even get a place to live at all.
I grew up in a socialist country with super low rent and the state owning everything. The rent was ridiculously cheap, but the housing quality was terrible. The state didn’t pay for upkeep and buildings just rotted. Sure there was also new construction of commie blocks. Good luck getting one of those apartments! Also you couldn’t even move to a different city without getting a state permit first. My parents had to bribe the state official with hard currency in addition to changing career, and using political favors to get an actual decent place.
yeah. the better way is city-built public housing. the city can either rent out or sell the apartments to people who personally need them, both work fine.
this way, you actually increase the amount of housing on the market, and also the city-built houses are typically rented out at-cost, instead of for-profit, which makes them a noticeable bit cheaper than housing provided by big private investors.
Agreed. City run housing should run at a low profit, so more city owned housing can be built with it.
Vienna does something like it, and it works well.