If only we had a government that could stop the rich and corporations from buying houses posted at under 1M (and index it to minimum wage or something)
The way to do that is to tax them.
Price controls don’t work–there’s a long and ugly list of examples of why–but increasing marginal taxation certain does work. We just stopped doing it because…mumble…mumble…supply-side…mumble…trickle-down…mumble…job creators…mumble.
You simply tax the things that harm society until those things go away.
Corporations owning residential homes should get taxed an extra 1% on the total value of the home every year, increasing at 2x the rate of inflation every January 1st. Do that for 5 years, then apply the tax to individuals who own more than one home, same deal - 1% + 2x the rate of inflation.
Combined with actual rent controls, this solves the problem, and it won’t shock the system and cause a housing crash, because various homes are at different stages of profitability.
I’m just some idiot on the internet. Why can’t some idiot in government come up with a similar plan?
