why are rents so high

In other areas it is also related to the number of private individuals, real estate entitles and corporations buying up private homes and properties as an investment and then jacking the rent or buying price as high as the traffic will bear. it has caused major problems in the Portland/Vancouver area. Portland is especially bad - an overwhelming homeless population.. A lot of Californians move up here to escape the skyrocketing housing costs down there - especially in the bay area and Southern Calif. I get offers all the time for my house and property.

I disagree with that. There are rent control laws. Some states limit what landlords can charge for rent, security deposits and late fees. The amount of rent a person can charge their tenants is a percentage of ones home's market value, which is usually around 1%. A landlord also has to pay the property taxes, maintenance costs and insurance on the building, something a tenant doesn't.

I know what you mean Inspector, so much has changed in people's values and many haven't any idea what's going on. I moved from an area because the rental market was rising in ways most average people were having difficulty keeping up with the rate of growth. There weren't any real rules in my area about how much people could raise their rents, unless you live in some kind of government rent control complex, they could triple the rent of a single family home rental, rents at my complex started out just going up about $50 the first year to just about $100 each year thereafter. There was only a handful of us who were there for more than five years. I left after six years of this, I just couldn't take the increases anymore on top of all the other rental insurance other increases.

There were many news articles about the increases, In the are I used to live there was even one family whose home went from being rented to them at about $1200 a month to $3000 I think it was just after a year at most two.

Many people are rehabbing what was considered the middle-class out of being able to afford many homes or even apartments in a lot of areas, so if you aren't one of the higher income earners close to the 6 figure mark, you're up a creek. You have to talk to real folks to know this, or at the least be reading the research and the news stories that are telling the people's stories. There are a lot of people living out of their cars and vans now because of displacement or just not being able to afford the rents close to their work.

A lot of teachers, service workers, your fire-fighters especially usually have to work second jobs, some even, this I know as I have shared housing with fire-fighters.

I have friends and family at all ends of the income spectrum so I've seen it all. Have some found themselves in dire straights as a result of their own making sure, most not so much, changing economy, growth in living expense requirements are fare outpacing growth in income gains. Some people don't have the luxury to keep shelling out mo money, mo money to pay for all these new pretty buildings going up for the people who are getting richer, moving out the people who just want a decent place to come home to after a hard days work. All they hear is move out of the way for bigger better, more, money is what counts, you should strive to have more want more, more, more.

Realistically, many people want to be homeowners, they just can't afford to be. A home that may have gone for $200K will be rehabbed into a home and resold for $400K Not many young people starting out can afford that considering they have so many student loans to pay off and other considerations. Most times finding a job requires living in more urban areas, or they face a lot of nepotism in certain areas, I've seen it play out a lot. The real world works a lot different than it does looking from a distance.

    There is nothing in those links that talks about rent control (except for a mention of subsidized housing).

This is just insane.