[oo0shiny]

How is the government stealing your income or destroying the value of your property? Seems a bit hyperbolic.

And if the free market solves this, why are we in this situation in the first place? Shouldn't the free market have solved this already? Instead we have piles of empty houses/buildings and more homeless than ever before.

[GardenLetter27]

Because there is no free market in housing whatsoever.

Owning land doesn't give you the right to build anything. You need planning permission - which means permission from the local council, local homeowners and consultation, etc. which gives the NIMBY attitude so much power.

There aren't piles of empty houses. There aren't enough houses at all.

[kube-system]

The free market doesn't work when there is extreme supply inelasticity, as is the case with land in desirable areas.

[anon291]

> And if the free market solves this, why are we in this situation in the first place? Shouldn't the free market have solved this already? Instead we have piles of empty houses/buildings and more homeless than ever before.

There is no 'situation'. Rational participants in the free market mostly have housing. The issue is that there is a widely available drug (fentanyl and meth too) that makes people behave irrationally, and thus the free market principles stop applying, since they presume a basic level of participant rationality. The fix from a government perspective is to remove the agency of those who are so drug addled that they cannot make good decisions.