This is ridiculous. The artificial scarcity of housing.
Imagine you threw a party, invited say 70 guests. And you order 70 slices of pizza - 1 slice per guest.
Except the first 10 guests, they each grab 5 or 10 slices each and hold on to them.
And now - now - they are trying to persuade the rest of the guests that there's a shortage of Pizza, no mention that their greedy little paws have manufactured the scarcity, never mind that some of them found they couldn't eat all the pizza they grabbed and threw it away, no - if you want a piece of Pizza now you have to pay top dollar. More than top dollar.
It's Cronus devouring his children.
We need to consider property in a new light.
First of all - there is no "ownership" of property - merely stewardship.
Ownership is an archaic idea. Property is not a right - like so many things it's a privilege - and expectations and references should be required.
Property is an archaic idea. We need to consider new models. That we are appointed stewards - can purchase stewardships - based upon our community involvement - not money - and our stewardship should be regularly reviewed. No run-down or vacant properties, no Crack-Houses, no - all of it.
It should be illegal to profit on the ownership of property. It's not a commodity - although we have made it one.
And - owning property should not be an in on political office - it should count against it. You need to be removed from the system to objectively rule upon it.
There will be no change to the current system until we demand that those shaping it have no stake in preserving it.
At the moment - the criminals are both the judges and jury.