If I can now pay say $100/mo for rent and after UBI I get $100/mo more. If I don't want to quit working I can now pay $200/mo for rent. This means that I would be looking for a bigger place to rent.

Now multiply this across the whole society and it becomes really apparent that landlords who do not increase their rents at all are just leaving money on the table that they could easily get.

Because if my hypothetical landlord would increase my rent say 1/2 of the new UBI increase I would get on top of my salary it would be really silly to start looking for a new place with same price as my old rent since those would all now be worst in one way or another.

Supply and demand it the main driver obviously, but just look at the Silicon Valley and neighboring areas. The rents are absurd partly because of demand, but mostly because the tech companies are paying ridiculous amount of money for the people to work there. If the pay would go down the rents would have to come down even if the demand stayed the same, since no one could afford them anymore. With UBI it would be the opposite. The demand would stay the same, but suddenly everyone could pay more for the same place.

> The rents are absurd partly because of demand, but mostly because the tech companies are paying ridiculous amount of money for the people to work there.

I think the correlation runs the other way. Tech companies pay ridiculous amounts of money because the rents are absurd, because demand far outstrips supply.

1. Demand is high because tech companies hire a lot of people.

2. Supply is limited because of geography, NIMBY-ism and Prop 13.

3. Tech companies pay their employees more and more money to retain them because it costs so much to live here. Also there are other tech companies happy to outbid them if they do not.

If supply weren't limited or job options not so plentiful, there would be no reason for tech companies to pay people more. They aren't handing out huge salaries for the heck of it.