For years, tenants and housing activists have complained that there is a housing shortage and that “the rent is too damn high.” While failing to tell us what rent would not be “too damn high,” they trot out a variety of proposals which do virtually nothing to increase the housing supply. According to the National…
For more than a century, discussions of government policy have followed the wrong framework. The resulting policies have not solved the problems that they were intended to address. Indeed, those policies have just made the problems worse. The wrong framework leads to bad choices, and bad choices lead to undesirable results. I call the framework…
The New York Times reports that many landlords in New York City are significantly raising rents—50 percent of more in many cases. They are trying to recoup losses suffered during the first two years of the pandemic. During that period, they had slashed rents to fill vacant properties. Renters are now paying the price for…
Eleven professional golfers, including Phil Mickelson, have filed an anti-trust lawsuit against the Professional Golf Association (PGA). The players have been suspended from PGA events because they are playing in the LIV Golf Invitational Series. Given the sorry state of our culture, the lawsuit is par for the course. The lawsuit alleges that the PGA…
Libertarians have long expressed disdain for intellectual property rights. As an example, Jeffrey A Tucker writes that “ownership is impossible as regards ideas, and no one has a right to profit as such.” Tucker is correct that nobody can own an idea. He is grossly wrong when he claims that no one has a right…
In the few months since St. Paul’s draconian rent control law went into effect, landlords, tenants, government officials, and housing activists have all expressed displeasure and confusion with the ordinance. The latest confusion revolves around the process to appeal for a rent increase greater than that allowed by law. And it illustrates the subjective nature…
California routinely provokes rational individuals to scratch their head in bewilderment. The latest example is SB1327, a gun law modeled after a Texas abortion law. The Texas law allows citizens to sue those who are involved in performing abortions. The California law allows citizens to sue gun manufacturers, gun shops, and anyone who transports an…
Attorney and housing activist Randy Shaw provides an interesting example of an unprincipled approach to housing policy. In a piece titled “Upzoning and Rent Control: A Perfect Match,” Shaw proposes giving property owners a tad more freedom at the same time government is tying their hands. Upzoning is the process of modifying a city’s zoning…
Sen. Ted Cruz has long been a critic of social media, claiming that they censor conservative content on their platforms. He has suggested using the anti-trust laws to stop companies like Facebook, Twitter, and You Tube from operating their businesses as they choose. Forcing companies to allow content is the flip side of prohibiting them…
Sen. Ted Cruz is upset with the Muppets. Last year, when Big Bird announced that he had been vaccinated, Cruz responded by calling it “government propaganda.” More recently, when Elmo announced that he too had been vaccinated, Cruz tweeted, “You have Elmo aggressively advocate for vaccinating children UNDER 5. But you cite ZERO scientific evidence…
“Just cause eviction” laws (sometimes called “good cause eviction laws) are, according to housing advocate Shelter Force, “a legal framework that requires landlords to provide sufficient grounds for any attempt to remove a tenant from [sic] through eviction….” Currently, four states and more than twenty cities have just cause eviction laws. While the details vary,…
On May 1, St. Paul’s draconian rent control ordinance took effect. The law caps rent increases to 3 percent, though property owners can appeal to government officials for a higher increase. In June, Dominium, a local housing producer, notified tenants in one of its apartment buildings that rents would be increasing by 7.97 percent. Tenants…