It'd certainly be a radical shift in a place like the US, but it's not hard for me to imagine public opinion taking a hard turn against the practice. There's no a consistent, visible, widely understood value added by landlords. In theory, it's that rental units incentivize new development. But when you're paying half your paycheck for a 100 year old home (true in a lot of the NE), it's hard not to feel like you just arrived late at a game of monopoly. Personally, I wonder what would happen if you passed a law that traded all these affordable housing requirements on new development for a ban on owning more than 2-3 homes older than threshold of years.
They bear the risk of prices going down. If I rent a $100k condo, and the housing market goes down 10%, I don't owe my landlord an additional $10k. (Schematically, my rent even goes down 10%).
