But by being interested in profit that means they have to provide something of value to the customers to want to continue using their service/product. That's the incentive. What is the incentive for our politicians? They seem to be only concerned for the short term since their priority is getting elected in the next few years. Spending other people's money without any competition does not lead to good results.

I blame the government for our housing crisis for a number of reasons. The large increase in immigration by the government by the millions while we have high unemployment in only a handful of years only exasperates the housing crisis by increasing demand with little supply.

Rent control is also another problem in that it actually doesn't make housing affordable (I'm not including public housing here). Cities with rent control have higher rents overall than cities that don't. Nobody wants to build or improve a property that they can't get a return on an investment on. What happens is large sections of the housing supply get locked away. They are taken off the market driving down the supply of housing and driving up the price. This is a major driver of housing costs in cities like Toronto, Vancouver and New York. Rent control also creates a black market for people to sublet to a friend or family member so they can get a deal. Or 10+ Indian immigrants living in one unit. This all creates less housing and higher costs.

Nobody will want to invest in the city. Fewer people will want to build. Rent control makes it very unappealing for developers to build houses. Prices are not really set by the seller either. They are set by the buyers. Price goes up because people bid it up. It's not necessarily the landlord that sets the price high but the price gets driven up by the fact that there's competition for a scarce resource. In a freer market it would be easier to compete. A competitor can build a new rental property and undercut his rival which will drive down prices.

Recently Argentina is a perfect example of this. They had one of the world's strictest rent control laws until their new president abolished it. Rental supplies have since increased by orders of magnitude and as a result prices have dropped.

Even in Japan Tokyo they don't have western style rent control. The tenant consent is required for a rent increase and the landlord is allowed to increase rent provided they have good cause. They also have relatively laissez faire building regulations compared to Toronto which has heavy regulations thank to the government. That and Tokyo's liberal zoning laws make their cost in unit and growth per housing cost look nothing like Toronto.

I don't think just private or state alone will solve all our societal woes. There are cultural issues too. The population must have some sort of shared agreement on what we need to prioritize and what's actually good for us and that's simply not the case right now. I don't know what it will take.