Yeah anytime the whole 'we already have enough houses' has been tested it has been found false. Demand in cities is constantly growing, and cities with green belts and all kinds of regulation simply can't expand. Total stock is irrelevant. The British solution if continued would also lead to rises as demand in cities grows.
> so the private sector simply can't manipulate hte market
They are not 'manipulating' the market, they simply have assets that are valuable because of high demand. You can only restrict supply if some other private developer can not simply buy land and build, and take that advantage away from you. If there was actually enough places to build, then the profit maximizing strategy is to build as many high value houses as fast as you can. And that's exactly how street car subburbs were built on mass. All these theories about how nothing is possible without defeating 'landlords' are just not true. Its the currently existing laws and regulation that set the board and people just play that game.
The reality is that we know the solution. We know that those places that build enough housing of the type demand by the market have lower rates, this has been proven over and over again.
In Britain Labor basically created a laws that made private house building much, much harder. They of course did this because they believed they would build lots of social housing. Of course because of money issues and their political downfall this didn't continue. But also off course, the laws restricting supply were not changed. So Labor and Tory both have a hand in the problem.
The problem are perfectly clear. Build more houses in places people want to live. It doesn't even matter if its social housing or private. I believe the market is perfectly capable of building the right kind of housing. But of course you can also do it with social housing. There are many ways to entourage more building. We need to stop making this about some political fight and simply look at the market basics.
In Houston Texas, the market did build many houses, and prices were comparatively low. But of course because of the type of regulation that still existed, this resulted mostly US style subburban sprawl. But I guess better then simply increasing prices. There is tons of other data that shows corroboration between house building and rents.
We don't have to totally re-imagine property rights law, we aren't gone abolish private property and renting isn't inherently bad. We simply need to create rules that make actual sense and provide the necessary infrastructure.
I'm not necessarily against some of the rules against landlords that you suggest, but we simply can't pretend that it is a solution by itself. The notion that all private ownership and renting is inherently hurtful is one of the biggest myths that's preventing any progress on this issue.
We know what to do, land-value tax, right-to-build, proper land-use planning, densification, take the space away from cars, transport oriented development. And this can be done entirely by the government if that your political bend.
> All this does is simply steal money from the next generation.
It actually enriches the next generation. We still have houses from the 16th century, still providing value for our community to this day.