We have run out of "zoned capacity" in the areas that people want to live.

Fortunately, this is an infinite resource, and we could flip simple governmental switches to allow more housing, which generates more property tax to grow the infrastructure.

However, existing homeowners are a political bloc that mightily resists flipping that switch, both because they don't like to see change, and also because they benefit financially from a housing shortage.

The institutions investors name these exact dynamics in their SEC filings: they know it's a good investment because local politicians listen to homeowners, and the homeowners will guarantee the shortage.

So in all honesty, I welcome institutional investors, and lots of them, because one their are more renters, the politics can be flipped. The renters, if they show up as a voting bloc, can finally open up the zoning to allow more housing.

Resident homeowners and institutional investors are no different here, they are both greedy investors, except the homeowners are even more greedy (they don't want new people in their city), and rhe homeowners have far more political control.

Agreed about individual homeowners; which is why the use of homes as an investment vehicle is intimately tied with institutionalized racism and redlining. You could not “invest” in redlined areas as banks would not issue mortgages on those properties. So those houses never appreciated in value the same as houses in non-redlined areas, and the generational wealth created by owning your own home was only available to those homeowners in non-redlined areas.

The history of redlining is incredibly recent (it was in full force well into the 1990s), so it’s not something we can pretend is a historical artifact. Highly recommend The Color of Law for more on this subject, it really opened my eyes on how laws used to encourage homeownership were also used to marginalize black people.