That's super fair and I think you are absolutely right that it's an obvious question. Generally when people get more money for some reason the people who they buy from don't know it - but in this case they would know it! It would be foolish to ignore it.
I don't have a pat answer to your concerns, but I also want you to think about what stops your landlord from raising your rent by $1000 / month right now. Like, why not just go for it? Unless there's rent control it's allowed. The classic "efficient markets" answer is that providing housing does have underlying costs and, though people having more money does tend to lead prices to go up, sellers are still competing for buyers. At least historically, even in boom economic times, housing costs did not 100% stay even with rising incomes (which is just what this is).
That said, us housing has been getting worse for most people for a long time. House costs have outpaced inflation for 60 years[1]. Rents are even worse[2]. Reporting suggests this is now being made worse by highly concentrated rental conglomerates[3]. That is to say that the cost of these services is not tied to how much money people have to pay for them - your scenario where landlords just raise prices to new income levels is actually optimistic. There's also practical evidence that local factors and competition will lead prices to go down under "the right" local conditions[4].
So I think my answer is that your concern is based on an idealized economic model, but the actual trends US in housing haven't really been following the economic ideal for some time. I don't think all gains from UBI would be snapped up by raising prices, but like all inflation we'd lose some! Overall, to me, the weakness here is that the study doesn't show that many benefits for a ~40% (!!) increase in income. Which seems WILD. Just not what you would expect at all.
[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2024/03/19/why-home-prices-have-risen-f...
[2] https://www.realestatewitch.com/rent-to-income-ratio-2022/
[3] https://accountable.us/watchdog-major-landlord-companies-con...
[4] https://sfist.com/2024/03/29/report-sf-rents-still-coming-do...
> I also want you to think about what stops your landlord from raising your rent by $1000 / month right now. Like, why not just go for it?
Answering as a landlord (I have one property I used to live in that I rent out), the reason I don't just keep raising rent is mainly because I like my tenant and want to be fair to them. Having had bad tenants in the past, a good tenant is worth their weight in gold.
More relevant to your question though, the other reason is because I know there's a ceiling after a certain point where the number of people who have the money to rent my property starts to shrink and the time it would take to find a new tenant would cost more than the amount of money I would make by raising rent.
If rent is $2000/mo and raising it by $100/mo means it's going to take an extra month to find a tenant, then I need to believe that that tenant is going to stay for at least 20 months to break even.
If everyone all of a sudden has an extra $1000/mo I could be fairly certain that my tenant won't be priced out if I were to raise rent a few hundred dollars.
Thanks - I hadn't thought to mention the risk of trying to raise rent but it's a good note. I was mostly getting at how the conditions in the UBI scenario ("everyone could pay $1000 more in rent if I insisted") is often true now and the 1:1 rent raising wouldn't happen under UBI for similar reasons that it doesn't happen now.
I also think people tend to under-rate the softer side of landlord / tenant relationships[1]. It's better to have a tenant who you get along with and who cooperates with how you want to rent a place. It's nice not to fight with your landlord. There's some economic value there too, but it's hard to quantify. I'm kind of interested in housing interventions that ban large companies from holding too many units of housing. It mostly "puts a ceiling" on how much profit one company can derive from many rental units, but actually I'm not sure I care - and trying to maximize the human connection between the person who owns the building and the people who live in it seems sensible.
[1] To be fair, when push does come to shove, a reason to under-rate them is the landlord looses some months of rent while the tenant becomes homeless. It pushes people towards strategic thinking.