The Economist has a polemic against New York’s rent control policies, which along with San Francisco’s are the strongest in the country, and with the most dysfunctional effects. The controls help mainly weathier tenants and do little for the poor in the outer burroughs. If nothing else, the historical track record of New York’s housing market should give progressives pause for the actual effectiveness of the controls.
That said, the article had me until the very end, when the author claims that
Perhaps the strongest argument offered by supporters of rent control is that it promotes stability; but, typically, long-term tenants in unregulated markets receive similar concessions, since it is in a property-owner’s interest to retain dependable renters in his buildings.
Have the authors actually rented a dwelling during a boom real estate cycle? In gentrifying neighborhoods, property owners will tend to decide their interest lies more in cultivating middle-class renters than in keeping long-term working or lower class renters. 20 percent a year rent increases were not uncommon here in Boston in many neighborhoods. It’s one thing to say that rent control brings a series of unintended consequences and therefore is a bad idea (I’d agree), another to imply that there isn’t a problem, that unregulated markets would make everything fine.
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