Let's say I'm a landlord. If you give my tenant $1000/month, I'll just take it. Their rent is now R+1000 next year.
You could tax the $1000 back away from me, but that doesn't stop the price from rising. It actually just boosts my incentive to take every last cent of the $1000 that I can extract.
I think you all need to think more about the economics. You have to be willing, on rational grounds, to step away from free markets in some other way in order to make this viable.
Let's say I'm a different landlord. If the other landlords are raising their rents, I know that by not raising mine, I can attract more tenants and increase my occupancy rate. Maybe I'm at 70%, and I need 80% to cover my costs. I know that if I raised my rents by $1,000/month, I would lose tenants to the landlords who didn't.
Maybe if you're a landlord in an empty town. But if you're a landlord operating at 70% occupancy, then you're not in a major city of most advanced economies. Cities have demand-driven pricing. 80% of Americans live in an urban area, according to the Census Bureau. There is constant and ever-growing demand, so there is no downward pricing pressure in cities -- Corona aside. I, as a landlord, can take any price the income levels will bear. That is why urban incomes and housing costs must, in tandem, rise unbounded.
You could tax the $1000 back away from me, but that doesn't stop the price from rising. It actually just boosts my incentive to take every last cent of the $1000 that I can extract.
I think you all need to think more about the economics. You have to be willing, on rational grounds, to step away from free markets in some other way in order to make this viable.