For at least the past thousand years, the bedrock principal of law has been "restraints on alienation of property are generally considered invalid".
That is, property owners are free to do what they want with their property.
Another is: Your rights cannot exceed those of who you got them from
(IE tenants cannot have greater rights to land than landlords)
Tenants are tenants for a reason.
The whole point of ownership is to have exactly the ability to have these rights.
Why should somebody who has no title to the land, be able to control what happens to the land?
The fact that someone lives somewhere doesn't give them magical rights to the place, and it shouldn't.
(Most landlord/tenant law exists to ensure everyone plays fair and doesn't flat out abuse each other, but doing something within your rights, tough shit)
Interestingly, the idea that it's your property and you can do what you want with it was often the justification not to rent to people of color, the disabled, and other disadvantaged groups.
The counter argument is, that the governments of regions, (cities, counties, states, etc) have to account for externalities that businesses don't consider or care about.
Governments see benefits in keeping housing affordable. Do you like having restaurants with waiters, stores with clerks, streets that are swept, trash collected, and so on? then those people need places to live too.
"Interestingly, the idea that it's your property and you can do what you want with it was often the justification not to rent to people of color, the disabled, and other disadvantaged groups."
Rent, maybe.
Sell, no, since that would be a restraint on alienation :)
"Governments see benefits in keeping housing affordable. Do you like having restaurants with waiters, stores with clerks, streets that are swept, trash collected, and so on? then those people need places to live too."
Sorry, but I don't see how this problem doesn't solve itself without any intervention.
If none of these people can afford to live in your area, and they aren't getting paid enough to commute, they'll go elsewhere where they can.
In turn, your area will start to suck, so you'll either pay them enough to commute, etc.
Sure, and in a purely capitalist system high food prices in the market are ostensibly "solved" by people dying of starvation or doing poorly because of malnutrition, but maybe there is a better way then pricing people out of a market.
Also that is the best case. Consider older people. I mean there is not really an economic incentive to help old people on fixed income afford homes. Maybe they should be turned out on the street to die, because if it was an issue, the market would have fixed it.
Blind market forces should eventually bring about a reverse, but you will get bubbles and depressions, and there are things which have social, ecological or other utility beyond dollars and cents which won't necessarily be accounted for.
Rent control is in play here I believe to prevent price gouging. Some companies are not very moral/ethical when it comes to tenants. I would argue that the fairer thing (when Rent Control is in place) for owners might be that they can discontinue the contract when it expires but they also forfeit the right to rent that unit for a period of time (like 6 mo or 1 yr). Owners have some right to reclaim the property for own use but then are discouraged from flipping the unit and just reusing it the same way with different people.
When I rented in Boston from operating companies, they always increased rent the maximum allowed every opportunity allowed. This encouraged a lot of churn in the area I lived which I don't think was good for the area. I also had a lot of problems with them never fixing appliances so I moved out. When I started renting directly from personal owners and allowed to go month-to-month then we were both happy and the owners generally never increased rent unless when their costs also increased.
Sure, i understand the moral/ethical part, and i'm generally in favor of preventing price gouging. But the vast majority of complaints i've seen are more "my rent increased from 3000 to 4000", when all the other rents in the area are $4000.
I had a bad experience myself renting in boston, that involved the health inspector fining the operating company about 20k.
Wait, really? You're in favor of artificial pricing constraints to avoid "gouging"? Doesn't virtually every reputable economist believe that those constraints decrease the supply of housing? The moral dimension to rent control seems just as dubious as the legal one!
When I say price gouging, i mean the economic definition, which is a very very specific thing:
IE when a coercive monopoly raise prices to levels that wouldn't exist if there was competition.
This does not decrease the supply of housing, because it's a monopoly, they are doing it because they can, not because supply is low.
Just because i've lived somewhere, means i get to live there as long as i want?
So once someone's got theirs, nobody else gets a chance?
As I mentioned in another thread, i'm 100% not a fan of people having some magical right to continue to live somewhere just because they've lived in that place, or their parents have lived in that place, a while.
It's essentially "blood right", and I emphatically believe it's not a great way to decide who gets to live where.
Not that i'm a fan of just kicking people around continuously, mind you, but things that end up doing the above (like endless rent control), are not societal good to me.
What you are calling 'simple' is actually an absolutist position based on neoliberal principles that serve those with power and capital. That's far from the only way to think. By introducing terms like "Blood Right", you are also exaggerating to create a straw man.
Being part of a social fabric is a basic human need. In the past the strong would displace the week from their communities through violence. Now we do that through the law, which seems like a great improvement.
Nevertheless there is no getting around the harm that you do to someone when you displace them from their community and support networks. This is why the law is not as absolute as you and others with your viewpoint would like.
By all means let's consider by what means we can balance this against other important human needs, but I don't think it's reasonable to claim that the freedoms to deploy capital without restriction trumps the need of humans for stable community.
I'd expect you, an expert lawyer , to know better. There are many laws that grant rights to people just for living somewhere long enough. Zoning laws exist. And eminent domain privileges are enshrined in the USA. Usury laws go back centuries. Law is a social contract, there is no inherent natural right of one person obeer another when multiple individuals live together in society.
That is, property owners are free to do what they want with their property.
Another is: Your rights cannot exceed those of who you got them from (IE tenants cannot have greater rights to land than landlords)
Tenants are tenants for a reason.
The whole point of ownership is to have exactly the ability to have these rights.
Why should somebody who has no title to the land, be able to control what happens to the land?
The fact that someone lives somewhere doesn't give them magical rights to the place, and it shouldn't.
(Most landlord/tenant law exists to ensure everyone plays fair and doesn't flat out abuse each other, but doing something within your rights, tough shit)