Rent control is the fastest way to destroy cities short of bombing them. Maybe it can destroy states just as fast.
Rent Control is Worse than Bombing - Econlib
Nobody can afford 1200 bucks a month for a studio; 2500 a month for a 1 bedroom; 3500 a month for a 3 bedroom. There are not enought hours in a day to work 3 jobs just to pay that, plus utilities, plus gas to get to work, plus food, plus health insurance. The only way that kind of money can be made on rent is to put bunk beds in each bedroom and charge rent PER HEAD, which is what is being done in college towns. For the regular joe and jane, its impossible to find something affordable. This lays on the home owner wanting as much as they can possibly get and that is set by others doing the same thing with their properties..hence, high rents nobody can afford as single or as families even with a job.
Rent control is needed. I stand by that.
Plenty of people stand by wrong ideas. Rent control leads to slums. Eventually the property has an accidental fire or just gets abandoned.
In Carson, San Juan Capistrano and San Clemente rent control is used to keep mobil home space rent low. Landowners can still raise rents or the property taxes would soon eclipse the rent. Apartments didn't fare so well. They fell to condo conversions.
Living in slums, run down apartments seems like a better solution to the poor lower wage earners who are struggling. Having more affordable housing even if the heat don't work, you get bug infestations now and then, mice once in a while, A/C don't work, ceiling leaks, mold. ETC. Some house is better than no house in my opinion. I'd rather have a lot more slums and lower cost apartments available for low-income earners and less homelessness.
My wife and I been low income earners almost our whole life. . We are fine living in run down places. I have lived in places that had mice, no heat, no a/c, leaky ceilings, gas leaks, missing/broken front doors, dangerous electrical outlets, mice we have had to kill now and then, bed bugs, roaches, etc. I have put up with these living conditions most of my life because had no choice and only thing could afford. Most people would stay away from those kind of places, but to me it sure is a hell a lot better than being homeless and after a while you get use to living that way and it becomes really not a big deal.
So I think rent control and increasing the amount of low cost housing in areas where there is a lot of homelessness is an excellent solution.
Right.... but... rent control doesn't do that. With rent control the total amount of housing available.... will go DOWN. So MORE homelessness. Not less.
If you want to increase the amount of low cost housing.... rent control will result in the exact opposite of that. It always has. There has never been a time in the last 200 years, where rent control resulted in more housing for low income people.
ALWAYS it has resulted in less.
Because the bottom line is, with rent control, there is less and less incentive to make new low income housing, and less incentive to keep low income housing. The result is always LESS housing.
Rent control = more homelessness.
I read the research myself and rent control is not all doom and gloom as you claim it is. According to the research I read online it did help tenants afford rent more. Yes it said it does slightly decrease amount of rent available and the quality of the apartments being rented. I don't think this necessarily means it will results in more homelessness.
From what I read about rent control the pros in my opinion for it seem to over rule the negatives. Not everyone wants to live in an apartment that is up to city code, has all the latest and greatest is of high quality etc.
But from your own words, it decreased the amount of rentals available.
So not all people are going to be living in any apartment, up to code or not.
If the population increases, and the amount of rentals decreases... that means not only does it not help the millions of homeless you already have, but even some that currently have homes, will end up without homes.
Now it's true, that in the extreme.... EXTREME short term... rent control does provide immediate help to those who already rent an apartment.
People who already have a place to live, will have lower rents.
Everyone else in the area is screwed. Rent control helps the extreme few, at the expense of the rest of society.
And by the way, it will screw over literally everyone else. Because rent control as you yourself said, will drop the number of rentals available. What this does, is create additional demand elsewhere in the market. That means while low income apartments drop in availability, those looking for living space will be forced into other markets. This will drive up demand for all other accommodations.
So demand for a townhouse that is not rent controlled, will increase, driving UP rentals on everyone else.
So again, those who get the rent controlled apartments will benefits. But the price for all other rentals will increase even more, because the supply of low-price apartments will decline.
Once again, this will push more people to homelessness.
And by the way, eventually the rent controlled apartments end up in the hands of the wealthy, rather than the poor who supposedly the rent-control is for.
This is rather normal. I mentioned in another post, where they found dozens of Hollywood elites, had rented rent-controlled apartments in NYC, because rent control made it cheaper to simply rent out an apartment that was empty most of the year, than to book a hotel when they needed to go to NYC.
Rent Control Needs Retirement, Not a Comeback
Serial experimentation with this policy has repeatedly shown the same result. Initially, tenants rejoice, and rent control looks like a victory for the poor over the landlord class. But the stifling of price signals leads to problems. Rent control starts by producing some sort of redistribution, because the people with low rents at the time that controls are imposed tend to be relatively low-income.
But then incomes rise, and rents don’t. People with higher incomes have more resources to pursue access to artificially cheap real estate: friends who work for management companies, “key fees” or simply incomes that promise landlords they won’t have to worry about collecting the rent. (One of my favorite New York City stories involves an acquaintance who made $175,000 a year, and applied for a rent-controlled apartment. He asked the women taking the application if his income was going to be a problem; she looked at the application and said, “No, I think that ought to be high enough.”)
People with $175K incomes, getting rent-controlled apartments. Management companies that have "key fees".... which are fees the person with a high income pays, to get bumped to the top of the list when a rent-controlled apartment comes available.
Routinely, over time, the poor end up pushed out of the rent control apartments, by the elite. Those poor people, end up either homeless, or back paying the now even higher rentals fees for non-rent-contolled apartments.
There has never been a rent control law ever, that had a long term good result. Never.
