{"id":2187,"date":"2025-11-24T08:08:00","date_gmt":"2025-11-24T08:08:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cmpa.us\/?p=2187"},"modified":"2026-03-11T16:06:54","modified_gmt":"2026-03-11T16:06:54","slug":"who-rent-control-really-helps-politicians-not-renter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cmpa.us\/index.php\/2025\/11\/24\/who-rent-control-really-helps-politicians-not-renter\/","title":{"rendered":"Who Rent Control Really Helps\u2013Politicians, Not Renter"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Original article by Jerry Agar<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Rent control is promoted as a fix for rising housing costs, but decades of data show it creates\u00a0shortages, discourages new construction and hurts renters and small landlords.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sowell explains that for every good that one person is said to have a \u201cright\u201d to, another person\u00a0must be compelled to provide it \u2014 whether it\u2019s landlords providing housing at below-market\u00a0rates or health-care professionals offering services without fair compensation. This, he argues,\u00a0violates the principle of voluntary exchange and individual freedom. In essence, creating a\u00a0\u201cright\u201d to housing under rent control forces landlords into a position where they must provide\u00a0services under conditions that do not allow them to cover costs, reinvest or even maintain their\u00a0properties.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In short, the goals of rent control and its actual consequences are at opposite poles.\u00a0How rent control stops new housing\u00a0When renting apartments becomes a losing proposition, it drastically reduces the likelihood of\u00a0anyone building new rental housing, whether to replace aging units or accommodate a growing\u00a0population. Three-quarters of the rent-controlled housing in San Francisco was built before 1950.\u00a0Again, this is not peculiar to San Francisco. Nothing brings private building to a halt like rent\u00a0control. Housing shortages have followed rent control in cities across the United States, as well\u00a0as in Europe, Asia and Australia.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Places like the Beaches compound the problem by having restrictions on how tall they will allow\u00a0buildings to be built or by trying to put building to a stop.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Artificially low rents distort housing use<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

When rents are artificially low, renters will use up more of the available housing than they would\u00a0in a naturally regulated market. For example, many young adults tend to live with their parents\u00a0and some even stay after college. However, young adults will seek to find their own housing\u00a0when rents are controlled. Why wouldn\u2019t they? They can afford it now.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Market Urbanism offers an example: Imagine a young married couple, Fred and Wilma. When\u00a0they married, they moved into a one-bedroom apartment. Then, when they had their son Barney\u00a0and needed more space, they moved into a three-bedroom apartment. After Barney left for\u00a0college and became gainfully employed, Fred and Wilma moved back into a one-bedroom\u00a0apartment. This way they could reallocate rent money, spending it on trips, movies, and fancy\u00a0dinners.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, in a city with rent control, Fred and Wilma would behave differently. When they had\u00a0their son, they would move into the three-bedroom apartment. But when Barney moved away to\u00a0school, they wouldn\u2019t relocate to a smaller one since they were getting the large apartment for far\u00a0below market value. If they moved, they would have to pay more money for less space. Indeed,\u00a0there is no motivation for them to relocate. Fred and Wilma wouldn\u2019t be the only people to\u00a0behave this way; it would occur citywide. When new, growing families would start looking for a\u00a0place to live, they would struggle to find adequate housing. Any housing that they would find\u00a0would be prohibitively expensive. On the flip side, older couples, who are likely to be more\u00a0financially stable, would still be living in the inexpensive units that they no longer need.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The wider impact on cities <\/h2>\n\n\n\n

As an article from the New York Times illustrates, there was more residential development taking\u00a0place in New York during the Great Depression than now, which is a result of rent control.\u00a0Rent control results in dilapidating buildings, followed by the people who instituted rent control\u00a0blaming the landlord.\u00a0A policy intended to make housing affordable for the poor has had the net effect of shifting\u00a0resources toward housing affordable only by the affluent or the rich since luxury housing is often\u00a0exempt from rent control.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Who rent control really hurts <\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Sowell argues that rent control is often sold to the public as an effort to quell wealthy people so\u00a0as to help the poor (who outnumber the rich and thus get the law passed). But the landlords of\u00a0rent-controlled areas that poorer people own are not always rich and have mortgages of their own\u00a0or need to spend time maintaining their properties. Thus, these middle-income people are also\u00a0hurt by rent control since they must split their time and often can\u2019t continue maintenance. This\u00a0leads to worse and worse conditions for those who live in these rent-controlled properties.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Original article by Jerry Agar Rent control is promoted as a fix for rising housing costs, but decades of data show it creates\u00a0shortages, discourages new construction and hurts renters and small landlords.\u00a0 Sowell explains that for every good that one person is said to have a \u201cright\u201d to, another person\u00a0must be compelled to provide it… Who Rent Control Really Helps\u2013Politicians, Not Renter<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":2188,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2187","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-housing-crisis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cmpa.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2187","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cmpa.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cmpa.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cmpa.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cmpa.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2187"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cmpa.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2187\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2189,"href":"https:\/\/cmpa.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2187\/revisions\/2189"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cmpa.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2188"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cmpa.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2187"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cmpa.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2187"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cmpa.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2187"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}