Rents for the rich are plummeting. Rents for the poor are rising. Why?

[dalton99a]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/03/22/rents-rich-are-plummeting-rents-poor-are-rising-why/

Rents for the rich are plummeting. Rents for the poor are rising. Why?
By Catherine Rampell
March 22, 2021

Faye Porter’s heat frequently doesn’t work, leaving icicles inside her windows during Chicago’s brutal winters. Her building’s stairwells and hallways weren’t cleaned sometimes for months over the past year, she said. Faulty wiring nearly started a fire in her kitchen not long ago. Yet, despite all this, her landlord recently raised her rent by $70.

“They say that the cost of living continues to rise, but then never provide additional amenities,” said Porter, who lives in Hyde Park, a diverse neighborhood on the city’s South Side. “They remain the same or are less.”

Porter could be the poster child of the rental housing market over the past year: rent hikes on lower-quality housing, generally occupied by the most financially insecure tenants, and steep discounts on luxury apartments catering to the rich.

Much has been written about the two-track, or “K-shaped,” economic recovery, in which higher-income households have generally been doing well financially, while lower- and moderate-income ones are foundering. High-wage employment has recovered to roughly where it was pre-pandemic; the number of low-wage jobs, on the other hand, is still deeply in the hole. But that’s not the only way that the poor have gotten a raw deal. Low-income households are getting squeezed from both directions — less income and higher prices for what is usually their biggest single monthly expense: rent.

For well-off tenants, bargains abound. In most major metro areas, rents for high-end residential housing have plummeted, according to data from CoStar, a real-estate analytics company.

[marble falls]

1. Wealth distribution.

[PBC_Democrat]

2. Supply and Demand

The wealthy are seeing less demand with stable supply - Prices Drop
The poor are seeing more demand with a stable supply - Prices Rise

The solution is more supply with public-private partnerships along with more housing subsidies to spread the poor throughout the community. When the poor are clumped together - things deteriorate.
When the poor have more mobility/more choices - landlords will have to compete to keep units occupied and things improve.

So noted that writing this a about a million times easier than making it happen.

[Solly Mack]

3. K&R

[abqtommy]

4. Maybe because the rich are the landlords?