[dornan]

Rent control is beneficial to incumbent long term tenants but is pretty bad for everyone else including those who are looking for an apartment. It's one of the many "pro-renter" regulations that constrains supply and makes rent higher.

Price controls don't work for groceries or gasoline, why would they work for rent?

If you can find data in support of such a policy I'd be interested to see it.

[frosted-flakes]

Rent control serves as a means to add stability. If landlords could evict tenants without cause and immediately rent to someone else for $100 a month more whenever the market changes, they would. That's bad for everyone.

The problem is that when a tenant has been renting the same place for 20 years with the landlord raising the rent as much as legally allowed each year, and it's drastically below market rates, but if the landlord evicts them they can't rent to anyone else for a year. The solution to that is to build more housing to bring down market rates so that people aren't trapped in one place forever.

[johnnyanmac]

Yes. But the thing is incumbent renters don't really have many rights in the US. The landlord is perfectly free to kick you out by not renewing the lease, and they need no reason to not renew it. So any benefits can be nullified by the very party the law is trying to protect you from.

>Price controls don't work for groceries or gasoline, why would they work for rent?

Whats the alternative? They increase rent to the point where people are kicked out anyway? Every option leads to unattainable rent except for the rich.

[JoshTriplett]

The alternative is to build more houses, and keep building, and keep building, until everyone can afford it. You cannot solve a supply shortage by controlling price; that just transforms an affordability problem into an availability problem. You solve a supply shortage by increasing the supply.

[daedrdev]

Build housing since we aee clearly in a shortage since they can raise rent so high