Am I understanding this right? The author is saying if your rent went up $100 up to $25 of that is price fixing? I find that number to be extremely low

There is a saying “God isn’t creating any more land”. Regardless of your religious beliefs, I think you get it. It’s common knowledge that if you’re renting you are throwing money away. If you can’t or aren’t actively working to buy a home you are throwing money out the window. That’s the cold hard fact. If you don’t like landlords then don’t enter into a lease and give them money. For normal people just starting out, The question you need to ask is “is this worth it to live here?” In the last 40 years the population has doubled from 4 billion to 8 billion. There is a breaking point. It’s unlikely we will double again in the next 20 years, but we’ve never been here before, so who knows? If you want to live in a city, fine. You’re probably not going to be able to afford to own anything, but hey, you can get that dish you like delivered from the small place down the road. If you want to live in a rural area your options are infinitely more affordable; however new home builds keeping up with increasing population and inflation is going to be your biggest obstacle, and you wont be able to get that dish you love so much delivered. Guess you’ll have to buy groceries and cook. People don’t build their own homes much anymore. My parents did it, but I see very few doing it today. So if you go that route I would expect problems getting the work you can’t do yourself subcontracted out easily.

There are at the very least four options with increasingly better value. City, Suburb, Rural, and Wilderness. If you have to commute then you are limited, if you can work remote your options are less restricted to areas with internet.

The more I hear people bitching a moaning about landlords the more pissed off I get. What are you doing to get off of your reliance of them? If you’re unwilling to leave a populated area to a more affordable place then sit down and shut the fuck up. They’re price fixing? Ok, prove it and sue them, but that takes time and energy. Time and energy you could spend to get off your ass and make better decisions. I don’t think the people complaining are going to do that. They seem somehow entitled to the place they live, but they don’t own it. You have better options and you refuse to see them.