&gt;Rents will eat up every last dollar of UBI, and we&#x27;ll be back where we started.<p>eh, in high demand areas, yes, that much and more.   I think the difference is that a big part of why people live in high demand areas is that they need to do so in order to find work.     If there&#x27;s good work in an area, rentiers can jack up the price of the temporary use of their capital goods.   This is where we are now.<p>But on the other hand, with a UBI that was sufficient to live in a low-demand area, you&#x27;d see a lot more people moving to low demand areas.   And there are a <i>lot</i> of low demand areas, making jacking up the rents on those places harder.<p>Many of the mechanisms landlords use to jack up prices (for instance building code restrictions that vary from the standards) are not practical in rural areas, and others, like restrictions on density, are not necessary.   If you don&#x27;t need to live somewhere you can commute to work,  fifty grand will buy you a house, septic, and a bit of land.<p>Also, there are a lot of what you call rentiers -  there need to be because jacking up pricing requires democratic support for restricting new housing, and this is usually an issue that votes on naked self-interest.