This person is advocating boycotting Amazon and going to local grocery stores instead. What the hell? How is that better?
This reminds me of a class of housing advocates who insist a higher minimum wage or rent control will solve housing problems. No, you still have 1 unit for 1.x people; the overriding issue is supply.
As someone who lives in a housing market where at least 30% of houses + apartments are sitting empty for months/years because their owner is being irrational (i.e. unwilling to drop to a market-clearing price), "rent control" (in the form of not just preventing rents from rising, but also capping the initial lease price landlords are able to ask for) would fix a lot of things.
Of course, anyone who thought the new rules would mean they could no longer profit in the market could get out of the market, selling off their real-estate assets. There'd be no limit on purchase prices for ownership transfer. But, of course, without the hyper-inflated (even though illiquid!) rental income, the units would be inherently less valuable, so they'd lose resale value, too.
You state this like it's an obvious measure; you're irrational over 2 months is my rational over 2 years.
Vancouver was absolutely booming in February after some of the steam was released in late 2019. Those vacancies are primarily because owners are using the house as a value store. How would caps on initial rental rates help at all? Those same owners would just never list them.
Rather than arbirtrarily cutting owners off at the knees, forcing them out, it would seem easier if you just left the area.