The plan disrupts all relief by increasing demands for housing---that hikes up house prices

While people could spend the money on anything they want, it’s not hard to envision a UBI being a godsend to an individual struggling to make make rent. But could a UBI be a solution to the affordable housing crisis on a broad scale?

It’s a tough question to answer in the abstract because there’s no telling how much of the money would be spent in the housing market. But the risk of a UBI to housing would be if the added income generated by a UBI would simply create more demand for housing in the United States at a time when demand is already high and supply is low. Additional income for everybody means everybody has more money to spend on housing, so a lot of people would be looking to move into a bigger or nicer place.

In the aggregate, this would put upward pressure on rents, because high demand and low supply allows suppliers to charge more money for the goods, in this case housing. If a UBI caused rents to rise, it would eat into the subsidy.

This would play out differently across income brackets. For wealthy renters in expensive apartments, an added $1,000 in income likely wouldn’t have a huge impact on rents because $1,000 is proportionally not as much when you make six figures and your rent is already $5,000.

But the risk gets higher as you move down the income bracket. For low-income renters, the extra $1,000 would allow them to absorb a higher rent than they could before—potentially a much higher rent. Landlords would recognize this, and it would very likely cause rents at the bottom end to rise.