Rent Control
There is a tremendous body of information on rent control including special studies and the impact of rent control. The following resources relate to mobile home park rent control as well as rent control in general.
Merriam-Webster Dictionary
Definition of Rent Control
rent control
noun
Definition: government regulation of the amount charged as rent for housing.
Additionally, recently there have been attempts to replace the name “rent control” with “rent stabilization”. Rent control appears in the Merriam-Webster Dictionary. Rent Stabilization does not. The reality is that those using the term “rent stabilization” are trying to say it is not rent control because there is an almost universal negative reaction to rent control. Rent Stabilization is Rent Control.
May 3, 2024 — Reason
Rent control is having something of a moment: In Los Angeles, tenants are invoking a law that imposes limits on apartments built on sites where rent-controlled units previously stood. A new rent control ordinance went into effect last month in the Bay Area city of Concord, California. Phillipsburg, New Jersey is considering similar restrictions. And, importantly, the Biden administration recently moved to cap rent hikes in some federally subsidized housing across the entire country.
But reviving bad policy doesn't make it less dumb than it was in past incarnations.
April 7, 2024 — Redland Daily Facts Opinion
For the third time in four election cycles, Michael Weinstein is using the AIDS Healthcare Foundation’s (AHF) money to try and attack apartment owners.
Weinstein says he wants to do this to protect renters – despite being labeled a slumlord himself by the Los Angeles Times because of the condition of the properties AHF owns.
AHF and Weinstein’s political tactics have been so caustic that the foundation has lost millions of dollars in grants and contracts from the state and federal government.
So, the notion that Weinstein has any “strange bedfellows” as Politico reported this week is a stretch. But not as much of a stretch as their article’s title – “Republicans... for Rent Control?”
Housing is a non-partisan issue – this is not about which party supports what policy because any honest politician knows that supporting rent control is merely pandering to constituents who call for the policy. Historically, it is a disastrous approach to affordability.
It does not produce any more housing – in fact, the opposite, as Minneapolis recently found out and had to amend their laws to try and encourage housing development.
April 6, 2024 — Calgary Herald
Swedish economist Assar Lindbeck, a well-known socialist, said, “In many cases, rent control appears to be the most efficient technique presently known to destroy a city — except for bombing.”
This is why when I read NDP housing critic Janis Irwin’s column that rent controls are a solution, I was puzzled. These types of knee-jerk policies would have a devastating effect. These policies would stall construction and increase the gap between housing supply and demand, and ultimately slow the economy.
In a time when construction of purpose-built rentals is at an all-time high, shutting people out of the rental market and discouraging new construction will only make the problem worse.
New stats released by BILD Alberta show Alberta’s plan to focus on increasing supply in the market is working. The Calgary region saw 1,674 total housing starts; that’s 57 per cent higher than the 20-year average for February and the second most starts in a February in Calgary’s history.
In Edmonton, we have 1,642 total housing starts, which is the second-busiest February on record. And with 2,325 housing starts in January and February, this has been the second most starts to begin a year in Edmonton’s history.
With the momentum in housing construction going strong in the two major cities, a rent control bill the NDP is proposing would bring housing construction to a halt.
April 4, 2024 — Restoring America
Rent control is a bad housing policy that won’t go away. Unfortunately, this term, the U.S. Supreme Courtrefused to review not one, not two, but three cases that challenged New York City’s 2019 iteration of the bad housing policy, euphemistically labeled “rent stabilization.” But thanks to Justice Clarence Thomas, the proverbial third strike might not be the last for opponents of rent control.
In a statement accompanying the last case the court denied, 74 Pinehurst v. New York, Thomas left the door open and provided a road map for future challenges.
This is important because rent control programs can be complex. And understanding what the court is looking for in a future challenge is crucial to crafting a successful argument.
While rent control programs vary, they generally function in two basic ways. First, the government caps rent at a certain amount, with that cap sometimes tied to inflation or some other economic indicator. Second, the government requires the property owner to extend leases with tenants at the capped price, regardless of what the owner wants to charge.
March 13, 2024 — American Institute for Economic Research
The Washington State House has passed a bill to cap rent increases at 7 percent a year. The Senate has yet to vote on it, and the governor has not taken a position. If enacted, this law would hurt renters, including low- income renters.
Advocates of the legislation call it “rent stabilization” rather than “rent control,” because “rent control” has gotten a bad name over the years (and for good reason). But in practice, it works the same way.
Capping rents means lots of people will want to rent at the capped rate, but fewer units will be available to rent, creating a shortage. After all, owners of apartment buildings can put their units to alternative uses, selling them off as condos, converting them to office spaces, occupying the units
In the long run, rent caps encourage apartment owners to skimp on maintenance as well. So fewer units are available, and they are of lower quality
The Washington legislation exempts apartments built in the past 10 years. But the law could still discourage new apartment construction. After all, builders have to keep in mind the possibility that 10 or 15 years from now, those new units themselves will be added to rent stabilization. This is precisely what has happened in New York over and over again.
March 7, 2024 — Forbes
There is no pixie dust in rental housing, only rent. Like any other business, owners and investors in rental housing product depend on customers paying for the product and that what they are paying and can pay is enough to cover costs. But when it comes to housing, a combination of wishful thinking, misinformation, and a desire for chaos shapes advocacy for rent control, a policy that arbitrary limits tracking rents to costs. Most rent control supporters will argue one of two things or both; rental housing is all profit and housing is a right and should be free of charge. Growing concerns about one New York bank are once again proving that basic economics, not egalitarian fantasy, are what govern how rental housing works in the United States.
First, its important to note that rent control doesn’t work, failing everywhere to achieve its stated goal of lowering rents for people who earn less money. There isn’t a single place with the measure that doesn’t have stubbornly high housing costs; this is because rent control, among other things, discourages and complicates the development of new rental housing. This means less supply and higher prices. Worse, because of what’s going on with banks who lend to buildings and projects with rent control, there may be even fewer rental housing units around, making the problem of scarcity even worse.
According to its website, New York Bancorp (NYBC) is “one of the largest regional banks in the country” with assets of $116.3, $85.8 billion in loans, $81.4 billion in deposits, and $10.8 billion in shareholder value (NYBC is publicly traded). But recently, the company has become something a canary in the coalmine for the troubled commercial real estate market, at least in New York City. Stories in the Wall Street Journal, Yahoo Finance, Reuters, The Real Deal, and others have raised concerns about the recent drop in NYBC’s share value. But each of the stories has also pointed out something else: the effect of rent control.
In first months since passage of St. Paul’s rent-control ordinance, housing construction is way down
MinnPost - March 10, 2022
When St. Paul’s rent control ballot measure passed in November, it contained a unique provision for national rent control policies: there was no exception for new housing construction. Typically, in order to make sure that new homes still get financed and built, rent control policies only apply to older apartments, either exempting buildings for a certain period of time or only including buildings built before a certain date. The policy laid out in the St. Paul referendum had no such exception.
With the passage of the rent control ordinance, there’s now a useful real-world experiment taking place. Was the conventional wisdom true that rent control would reduce housing construction, and if so, to what degree? Or is it possible to apply rent control to new housing without impacting the new apartments that cities like St. Paul need?
Building permits down over 80 percent
With three months of data on the books since the passage of the rent control measure in November, results are rather grim for anyone hoping for new apartment buildings in St. Paul. Compared to the same period during the previous year, multifamily building permits are down over 80 percent. Meanwhile, in Minneapolis overall construction is up as the economy has rebounded.