The Democratic Socialists of America has imagined a future in which the bills disappear.
“You don’t pay a mortgage or have a landlord,” its 2026 program declares. Its housing agenda calls for publicly owned construction, tighter regulation of investment properties, and universal rent control.
For people struggling to afford an apartment, that is an attractive invitation. But eliminating the landlord does not eliminate the cost of housing. Someone must still finance construction, replace the boiler, and repair the roof. Socialism changes who receives the invoice.
Capitalism offers a more credible route to affordability: Reward people for supplying homes, then make them compete for tenants.
The distinction matters because a landlord’s greatest advantage is a renter with nowhere else to go. More available apartments weaken that advantage. A competing building gives tenants an alternative and owners a reason to negotiate. Profit attracts investment. Competition pressures owners to offer better terms.
Rent control promises a shortcut. Its benefits can be substantial for tenants who secure protected apartments. Its costs often fall on people still looking.
Economists Rebecca Diamond, Tim McQuade, and Franklin Qian studied San Francisco’s 1994 rent-control expansion. Their 2019 American Economic Review paper found that the policy reduced displacement among incumbent tenants. But affected landlords reduced their rental housing supply by 15%, including through sales to owner-occupants and redevelopment. The researchers concluded that the lost supply likely increased market rents over time.
That was a reduction in rental availability, not the destruction of 15% of the city’s homes. The distinction makes the finding more revealing: Owners responded to regulation by changing how their properties were used. The government controlled the price without controlling the response.
One study cannot establish the effects of every rent regulation. It should, nevertheless, trouble a movement proposing universal controls. Protecting today’s tenant while narrowing tomorrow’s choices is an expensive definition of progress.
Minneapolis offers a different approach. Successive reforms relaxed building restrictions, reduced parking requirements, and allowed more apartments near transit and commercial corridors.
According to Pew Charitable Trusts researchers, the city’s housing stock grew 12% between 2017 and 2022, while rents increased 1%. Elsewhere in Minnesota, housing stock grew 4%, and rents rose 14%.
That comparison does not prove zoning changes explain the entire difference. It does show that substantial construction can accompany restrained rent growth. The reforms gave private investment more room to meet demand.
Socialists also propose building homes. Public construction can add supply. The question is why we should restrain private provision while asking taxpayers to finance more of the burden. Public ownership does not exempt a project from construction costs, financing constraints, or maintenance obligations.
Nor does defending capitalism require defending every landlord. Fraud, collusion, and unsafe conditions deserve enforcement. Families unable to afford adequate shelter need targeted help.
But a serious affordability agenda must also welcome the investor willing to finance another building. It should permit more apartments, establish predictable approvals, and remove rules that protect existing owners from competition. High interest rates and material costs already make construction difficult enough.
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The socialist program asks people to imagine housing freed from private profit. A more useful ambition is housing freed from chronic scarcity. Earning a return by adding homes serves a public purpose, even when the builder’s motives are entirely commercial.
The strongest protection a renter can bring to a negotiation is the key to somewhere else.
Ori Solow is an Israeli-American and the founder of SZM, a social media movement advocating the safety of Jewish New Yorkers and empowering the next generation of Jewish voices.