I definitely agree that rent should be much more controlled and affordable. And yeah banks definitely don't need more money. But a majority of Americans have fixed mortgage rates under 4%, which makes a lot of them keep their old house when they move, and just rent it out. Which just makes it harder for people to break into the housing market. And houses are an investment that renters don't have access to, and that's just one of tons of things that keeps poor people poor.

[–] pelespirit@sh.itjust.works 3 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

which makes a lot of them keep their old house when they move, and just rent it out.

Yeah, that's not a thing:

Meet the Billionaire Investors Behind the US Housing Affordability Crisis

With roughly 800 billionaires in the U.S. with combined wealth of $6.2 trillion (and 2,781 billionaires globally with over $14.2 trillion), ultra-wealthy investors tend to diversify their holdings across multiple kinds of assets. A huge amount of this billionaire wealth is invested in property, land, and housing. Billions and possibly trillions of dollars are sucked into predatory investment practices and luxury housing schemes — where global billionaire investors park vast quantities of wealth in U.S markets.

This is not your grandparent’s gentrification, but rather a hyper-gentrification fueled by concentrated wealth driving up land and housing costs, expanding short-term rentals, and treating housing like a commodity to speculate on or a place to park wealth. The billionaires are displacing the millionaires, and the millionaires are disrupting the housing market for everyone else.