Here’s how rocketing rents and unaffordable house prices can be fixed

theguardian.com:

Two years ago, when Covid-19 was declared a pandemic, I had a strange sense of optimism. I wondered if this crisis might be one of opportunity, rather than opportunism. When the pandemic struck, another global crisis was already raging. In cities around the world, housing affordability had become an acute problem. The cost of housing had risen far beyond the rate of incomes. As the former UN special rapporteur on the right to housing, I had seen how tenants were struggling to pay rent, often falling into arrears and facing eviction.

These conditions were partly the result of the 2008 financial crisis, which provided fertile ground for investors to mine residential real estate and extract unprecedented profits. This “financialisation” of housing unleashed a new business model. Investors would buy “undervalued” and “distressed” homes, undertake renovations and raise rents to increase a property’s valuation – maximising their investment returns in the process.

I was convinced that during a global health crisis when people were instructed to stay home, governments would harness all their resources to do whatever was necessary to ensure everyone had a decent home – if for no other reason than to prevent the spread of a deadly virus. At first, my optimism seemed well-placed. With economies at a standstill, governments around the world quickly recognised that tenants needed help. Many jurisdictions passed financial aid and eviction moratoriums to help tenants pay the rent and remain housed. For example, in England the government’s Everyone In scheme housed rough sleepers in hotels.

But in most cases, attempts to help tenants were limited to emergency programmes, leaving the underlying causes of the global housing crisis untouched.