This is not a good analogy. When you are sick, you need to get treatment, you're time constrained and usually space constrained too (you wouldn't travel 3 states out if you need an urgent procedure).

With housing it's more flexible: you can commute longer each day. You can just not move to a city where you know the "salary/cost of living" is not working in your favor. You can also time these decisions: go to NYC when you are in your 20s, live with some roommates to get some savings and then when you get older you can move to a more spacious city. You can be flexible about the space you need too: from 1 bedroom in a shared apartment, to a 3 beds detached house in a quiet suburb in another city, there is a lot of flexibility.

In a city there is a constraint on how much you can build, and everybody wants to be there. You can let the free market set the price, or you can try to distort the market with rent controls and then you end up with black markets, illegal payments, people holding on to their apartment for way longer they would normally do etc. Why would a 1 person ever move out of a large apartment if they have a low rent? They don't care that the same apartment would be a god-send for a family of 4...

> With housing it's more flexible: you can commute longer each day. You can just not move to a city where you know the "salary/cost of living" is not working in your favor. You can also time these decisions: go to NYC when you are in your 20s, live with some roommates to get some savings and then when you get older you can move to a more spacious city. You can be flexible about the space you need too: from 1 bedroom in a shared apartment, to a 3 beds detached house in a quiet suburb in another city, there is a lot of flexibility.

You _really_ think people aren’t already doing that, huh. Rents are too damn high AFTER all these options have been exhausted, and not because (as Fox News will happily tell you) people are lazy and entitled.

I am a renter myself, and I don't watch Fox. I much rather prefer living in cities(and I lived in expensive ones) where I can budget my rent on the free market, rather than be at the mercy of black markets, wait lists of 20 years and decrepit buildings that barely pass code.

> If all the landlords are using collusion

The market for housing in a metropolitan area cannot be organized. Everyone is a landlord. If rent spikes to 100k a year, I'm going to throw away shit so I can rent my 2nd bedroom for 50k, and the cycle continues down.

Why would you rent for 50K if you can rent for 100K? Are you an economically irrational actor?

Same applies for landlord who could either undercut the competition or join the “app” (aka collusion ring) to make higher profit.

In that scenario it's a shared place vs your own.

> collusion ring

Once again, markets for such a commonly desired good are not 5-10 or even 100 participants. They are unstructured webs of opportunities and favors.

The problem is that the market determines the rent but the government determines that building houses is mostly illegal.

“Government” isn’t a magical boogeyman coming out of a magical swamp to make magical laws. It’s literally NIMBYs, which are largely current property holders which are also in large part landlords. They’re playing the game to the full extent, and it’s high time they are contested in the same game.