A part of the solution is “government owned housing” rented at fair price. Most countries have such housing for “poor people” but not enough for everyone. Let alone the whole “cut-down in welfare budget” means that these building are badly maintained and that even if you’re poor enough but not homeless (e.g. full time minimal wage) you still need years for your application to be accepted. I believe that Denmark and Austria are the few countries where this model is common even for middle class. It may-be a model to follow, at least for lower middle class

There are many reasons why renting is better for some people and buying is better for others.

Renting gives you the flexibility to just up sticks and leave at a known notice period. You don’t have to worry about the boiler breaking, or mould/damp, or the roof coming off (or like I’m about to have to deal with, a fence panel getting blown away in a storm) because your contact with the landlord says they’ll fix that for you.

There should absolutely be that choice available.

The problem, at least in the UK and probably elsewhere, is that renting is just SO expensive that it’s not possible to rent and save money, meaning that if your goal is to buy, you can’t because you can’t raise the deposit, even if paying a mortgage on a similar sized property would actually be cheaper on a monthly basis.

Sure, you read stories about people who are wonderful landlords, they don’t raise rents, or at least, by less than market rates, they’re quick to fix any problems the tenants have, all that good stuff.

Equally, you read stories about people who are basically renting from Satan and all the things I mentioned above take months or years to get fixed, if ever. (Slumlords are definitely people who should be put up against the wall and shot come the revolution)

I’m assuming the vast majority are somewhere in the middle.

But the fact that you’ll probably rent for at least some of your life shouldn’t drain all your money into someone else’s mortgage. As I said in that other post, housing of some form should be a basic human right. And the fact that individuals or companies can buy many houses and leave them empty because they can afford to have rents set so high that most people can’t afford them? That’s just wrong.

To draw a parallel to the problem of health care - in systems of socialized medicine, a health insurer does de-facto exist, so health insurance does not get entirely abolished when switching to socialized medicine. It’s just that the health insurer is now the government, and the system is no longer ran to optimize for extracting money out of the system, but instead to optimize for population-level health.

Similarly, when trying to reform the housing market, landlords don’t fully go away - you can for example imagine a system where the government becomes a very large landlord and optimizes the system for maximum level of ‘people housed’ (or whatever you want to optimize this system for).

There are also various forms of housing cooperatives, where the landlord is a body consisting of all the tenants collectively.

The landlord most people want to be rid of is the rent-seeking kind, which optimizes the system for extracting money.

The world is not black and white. Example: I am a rentee in Germany in a house with 16 flats. My landlord owns exactly one flat in this house, the one I live in. The house and the adjacent house is owned by a community of owners. They meet once a year for decisions of all kind. They employ the services of a buidling managament company that sees to things like light fixtures in the garage and stairwells, cleaning of stairwells, repairs, winter service, trash cans moved to the streets, etc. This ist the 4th or 5th rental flat I have lived in. About 50% of people in Germany live as rentees. It generally has been a good experience for me. Finding a suitable flat has been difficult last time, in 2022. Generally, I want this option. Buying a home does have it perks, but generally it is financially not the best option. Example: if I want to buy a flat in the vincinity of my rental appartement, same size, same facilities, I would have to fork over 400k€ at least. If I even find anything comparable. As of now, I pay 660€ of rent each month (+ utilities). That means, that I could just as well live happily as a rentee for the next 50 years for the same amount of money. I am 47 now, so even accounting for some raises of the rent I could live here for cheaper as a rentee until I die.

I will buy a property in 2026 nevertheless. But it will not be located as conveniently as my current flat. I will be able to buy a house for maybe 220k€, but it won’t be within the city center, like my current flat. But the new gf and her kid make an own house more desirable.

Fistfight.
Or alternatively rock paper sizzers.

It wouldn’t need to.