>>11147397tons of real estate is already laying around empty for 5+years and their owners are saying it's a good thing.
They're making more money off the businesses that can afford the higher fees, while half their properties are barren. If they lowered the fees for those empty places, they'd have to lower the fees for the current tenants, because that's just how the market works.
It's a huge problem and most property owners are fighting tooth and nail to make sure most people don't even hear about this. They even use computer programs (an app) to bypass collusion laws, so owners never have to speak to each other to keep rent artificially high. So if the government steps in, it'll be at least a decade from now. This is going on in so many states, including ones that people consider to be cheap.
I mean, go look at California right now and how they basically outlawed new single family homes from being built. It's why so many silicon valley employees live in vans and RVs along the road to Google's headquarters, because despite high pay, they can't afford a house (or find one) and don't even want to think about apartments with super inflated rent. So California is building more homes now, but they're almost all apartments that are for rent/lease, because it makes more profit for established land owners and the cities who'll net more taxes that way.
tl;dr: the economic collapses in 2008 and 2021 didn't do shit, except make landed folk even richer. You need government intervention, and not local government, because most of these assholes are just helping their friends make more money.
