Apparently you haven't been paying attention to what's happening in the rental market. Landlords in cities with strong tenant protection laws will absolutely leave a unit vacant for months until they find someone with a high income ratio and credit score. This leaves poorer people stuck with no options.
In Amsterdam it led to them getting sold
Do you have evidence? There is evidence that RealPage software illegally coordinated (maybe coordinates) landlords in keeping units off the market in order to reduce demand and increase prices for everyone.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/24/technology/realpage-doj-s...
Me (and others in this thread).
I have a 5 bedroom house that I rent out 2 rooms, but not interested in accepting more people unless they are friends or have a very high income.
At my home’s peak, we had 6 adults living there, now its at 50% capacity.
How many high income individuals want to share a house with 5 strangers?
Apparently not many hence the empty house.
In SF and Seattle during hiring booms, a lot of young workers move to the city with no social connections, so they start their new life in hacker houses to kickstart their friend group.
It's surprisingly common in places like SF, and near popular colleges.
Vacancy tax. No one should have the right to buy multiple, rentable homes and keep them unused in the middle of a housing crisis. It’s sociopathic.
So in the Netherlands, For many years any property left vacant and unused dor more than a year could be legally squatted.
it forced landlords to keep their properties on the market and insured full usage of the severely limited available housing stock