Ok, sounds like we're closer in thinking than I thought then. I think you're underselling socialized housing somewhat - it's definitely less efficient at a smaller scale, but if you need a lot of housing in bulk then that central planning becomes a benefit. I think some combination of both (such as in Austria) could work, but no fully market-based solution is going to cover everyone.

I guess the thing is, I know price controls can make the supply situation worse. I think the impact is overblown - there's still going to be developers who can turn a profit if the controls aren't too onerous, but there is a negative impact. In my opinion though, it's a worthwhile sacrifice in the short term to avoid evictions and displacement.

There's got to be some sort of compromise here, IMO - like, that's why I mentioned 10% (very arbitrarily), it's still above inflation usually, still allows for developer profit, but doesn't allow for insane price hikes all in one go. With enough supply, that kind of rent control would be de facto pointless anyway. The places where rent control failed are usually because they never bothered to actually fix the supply constraints. Maybe artificially lowering the price a little didn't help the supply, but single family zoning and long arbitrary approval processes for multi family housing are a much more significant artificial limit to supply. I don't think it's all or nothing - there's a certain amount of rent control you can get away with if you remove enough supply restrictions, there's got to be some sort of balancing act possible here.

I guess what I'm saying is, the whole concept of rent control shouldn't be written off just because people expect it to "solve housing". It's an often misused tool with some drawbacks, and there are better ways of providing housing stability (such as social housing), but when done properly it can be a net positive. Or put more succinctly, rent control of a private market is probably the worst way to reduce evictions and sudden rent hikes, but it is a way of doing that. And apparently that's the best we can expect from our politicians :/