> Somehow the homeowners almost always win against the renters in this political tug-of-war.

Demographics. Homeowners skew old, which gives them a bunch of advantages in enacting their political power. Higher turnout, baby boom giving them numerical superiority, and the time advantage of being able to enact policy decades ago.

In the US, this is supplemented by matters of race, where because of past redlining policies, "pro-homeowner" policy (esp. suburban single-family-homes) in the last half-century has been a way to primarily benefit white people.

> Voters don't actually want house prices to come down.

You have this wrong.

> Somehow the homeowners almost always win against the renters

First lets look at homeownership rates: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/RSAHORUSQ156S Home ownership is a functionally unmovable number staying around 63%

Home owners are in the majority.

Do you know what one of the biggest predictors of voting is? It is home ownership and local elections with zoning issues (or things that might impact home values) will drive turn out: https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/insights/if-you-lived-here-you-...

Meanwhile to the original article, 80s TV like Golden Girls (shared housing) and Boosom Buddies (boarding houses) are quaint historic notes, the reality is that our use of housing stock has made the problem of where to live worse: https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2023/06/more-than-a-q...

When you dig down into the data, the article is highlighting a real problem. We have destroyed a lot of historical co-habitation that kept the system working and healthy. We did this with zoning (getting rid of high density to prop up home values) banning types of housing (dense single room, affordable) and making other types impossible (owning a home and renting a room or two, people dont do this because of tenants rights issues).

> Voters, in aggregate, want rents to fall and prices to rise, roughly divided by renters vs owners

I assure you, a lot of people in the UK want house prices to fall too. There are too many renters who don't want to be renting, and the proportion is increasing. They wish they could buy instead, but can't either because of price, inability to save enough for a down-payment as fast as prices rise (while large rent rises impede their saving or even drain it, and incomes rise more slowly than prices), or inability to obtain a mortgage despite a history of consistently paying more than a mortgage in rent. For the latter category, who can afford a mortgage but can't get one, and are already paying more in rent, their main problem isn't income or price, it's the tighter restrictions on mortgage availability since the 2008 financial crises. But they would still like lower prices.

Most people in the US live in a home owned by themselves or a member of their immediate family.

On top of that, more of those people vote than the renters in their area.

There's not really much more to it than that.

Somehow? Homeowners are obviously the more powerful group, and real estate ownership in the bigger picture is tied to even more powerful entities (big companies, banks, billionaires).

How many in the top 10% of the wealth distribution do you think are renters? How many in the bottom 20% do you think are homeowners?

In the UK specifically the radical reform (read destruction) of council housing by the Thatcher government had a large impact on the housing market in the 1980s.

Afaict Housebuilding will not improve based on current legislatory changes, not even close. Until you murder land value capture nothing will change.

In 1970 you could basically buy any non-city plot of land and build a shack on it without anyone bothering you. Think of the back to the land hippies in California just chopping down trees and starting their little communes -- they'd be utterly fucked if they did that now, some Karen would rat them out instantly to planning and zoning committee.

In the late 60s/70s DIY builders were almost completely displaced by developers who lobbied for regulations that stomped out "a guy and his pickup truck" by and large almost anywhere with desirable land. Then the owners of those houses reinforced same to prop up their property values.

I live in one of the last remaining counties that didn't do that, and last year I built a house for $60k. Pretty easy if you're in a place with essentially no codes or zoning. My (fairly) newlywed and I built the house with basically no experience either.

> They are generally jointly and severally liable (under an AST).

That’s usually the case for student rentals but largely isn’t the case for professional rentals where each room is let separately

> Whether that's good or bad policy isn't my place to say

Right, you're just dragging in migration to the discussion, which is entirely a side issue, purely out of the goodness of your heart.

From your link:

> The UK has experienced broadly similar levels of migration compared to other high-income countries, on average, over the past few decades

That doesn't make it sound like the UK is an outlier, contrary to the implication of your statement.

UK's population has gone up 16% since 1980. Average UK home price, adjusted for inflation, has gone up 104% in the same time period.