Fast, Vast, and Built to Last

The 12 Best Arguments for Rent Control

Photo: Sawant-Rent Control 4 Wikimedia Commons

“The Rent is Too Damn High”  is a national rallying cry for good reason: it is objectively true. In a nation of 44 million households renting their home, rents in recent years have been rising far faster than wages and faster than overall inflation. This pattern continues a frightening trend: in the first 15 years of the 21^st century, median rents increased a whopping 50%, adjusted for inflation, even as household incomes did not increase at all.

It is a squeeze that has caused 8 million households to currently be behind on their rent and thus in imminent risk of adding to the already-rising number of evictions. Housing is far and away the top costs for most households –especially renter households—so rent spikes have broad, toxic impacts. Many renters are going without food, delaying medical care, and having their utilities shut off because, as the saying goes, “the rent eats first.”

The fastest, most impactful policy we can adopt to confront this crisis is rent control, government-imposed limitations on the amount landlords can charge for rent. Almost all current rent control programs allow for regular rent increases, often a significant percentage plus an increase that reflects inflation. For example, the state of Oregon’s rent control allows landlords to increase their rent in 2023 by 14.6%.

Rent control protects tenants from price-gouging while also guaranteeing landlords a fair return on their investment. Yet the landlord lobbyist industry has spent hundreds of millions of dollars spewing false claims about rent control in ad campaigns and in media appearances where their baseless claims too often go unchallenged. So here is a one-stop, 15-minute read that summarizes the best arguments in support of rent control. For those who want to learn more detail, there are references hyperlinked throughout:

1.    Rent control provides relief that is fast.

The long-term answer to our U.S. crisis is moving away from the commodification of housing to embracing housing as a human right guaranteed to all. That means a great deal more—and better maintained—public housing and other forms of social housing. These are solutions proven to be effective in other nations and in our own past U.S. practices. A necessary step on that path is universal vouchers, guaranteeing housing assistance for all who are eligible the same way the U.S. already does with food and medical assistance. All of these non-market policy reforms are imperative in a nation where millions of Americans—including a lot of the single parents and persons with disabilities we see in court—simply cannot afford market-rate rent.

But, as someone who spends part of each week in eviction court representing tenants facing the loss of their home, I can attest that renter households need immediate relief.  Non-market fixes will take time to implement. So would the remedies others support with more enthusiasm than I do, such as a big increase in housing construction which would in theory lead to lower costs overall. The current reality is that the only option for our clients and the vast majority of renters is the private, for-profit rental market. That leaves rent control as the response that addresses their monthly struggle quickly.

Part of the reason rent control can move so fast is because it carries little cost to taxpayers. Rent control administration is performed by government agencies, some of whom fund themselves with small fees charged to landlords, a cost more than offset by avoiding government costs associated with housing insecurity like homeless services and eviction proceedings.

2.    Rent control provides relief that is vast.

The most comprehensive, well-structured report on rent control I have seen was published for Policy Link, the Center for Popular Democracy, and the Right to the City Alliance by Amee Chew and Sarah Treuhaft. Chew and Treuhaft summarize the argument perfectly:

“Rent control is the most immediate solution to address the affordability crisis—its speed and scale, cost-effectiveness, and ability to protect a huge swath of low-income and marginalized renters are unrivaled.”

The breadth of rent control’s impact is demonstrably true. In cities with active rent control, the number of households with stabilized rents far exceeds households living in public and subsidized housing. So it is important to resist landlord lobbyists’ attempts to water down rent control’s impact. There is no justification for exempting from controls some rental property, like single family homes or mobile homes, exemptions that disproportionately harm rural renters. The same is true for so-called vacancy decontrol, a loophole that allows landlords to spike rents between tenants, creating a strong incentive for unjustified evictions that is proven to disproportionately harm Black renters.

Most importantly, rent control works. Landlord lobbyists have been able to sow popular confusion about the impact rent control has on new housing construction and whether the poorest renters benefit the most, issues we will address in Arguments Six and Nine. But even the landlord lobbyists can’t argue with the data showing that rent control effectively addresses the pressing crisis: simply put, rent control lowers the cost of housing compared to unregulated housing.

The price of for-profit housing, even when controlled, is still too high for the many renters we see in eviction court who are struggling with severely limited incomes due to disability and family obligations. For them, non-market housing is a necessity. But, as these same clients tell us all the time, every dollar reduced from their rent put them a dollar closer to the safety and security they need and deserve.

Speaking of security, the evidence is extremely solid that rent control leads to tenants staying in their homes for a longer period of time. That is a benefit so important that it deserves two of its own arguments:

3.    Built to Last, Part 1: Rent control brings stability to households.  

Rent control allows families who have been battered and displaced by big annual rent hikes to take a deep breath, put down roots, and reap the benefits of a stable living arrangement. The evidence on this point is conclusive: under rent control, tenants stay in their homes significantly longer, even in neighborhoods that are being gentrified. Rent control disproportionately benefits those who need it most, especially the Black-led households, households with children, and elderly renters most likely to be displaced from unregulated housing.

U.S. tax policy unfairly provides generous benefits to homeowners that renters do not enjoy, part of the reason why homeownership is so often portrayed as the essence of the American dream. But, even beyond tax benefits, renters’ desire for homeownership is fully rational, because homeownership promises stability that renting in an unregulated environment cannot match. In our law school clinic, we routinely see families being displaced because their landlords increased their rent by huge amounts, refused to renew leases because of a desire to remodel and charge higher costs, or sold the home out from under them. Along with renter protections like good cause requirements for evictions and non-renewals and robust enforcement of housing codes, rent control provides renters with the stability that a homeowner with a fixed-rate mortgage already enjoys.

That matters. Housing stability is clearly linked to longer tenures at jobs and improved educational outcomes for children.  Studies show that a student loses 3-6 months of education with each family move. Housing stability has a particularly positive impact on health. Research conclusively confirms what common sense already tells us: frequent moves and housing instability harms children’s and adults’ physical and mental well-being, leading to increased hospitalizations, worse mental health, reduced ability to escape domestic violence situations, decreased access to medications and healthy food, and spikes in depression and anxiety.

4.    Built to Last, Part 2: Rent control brings stability to communities.

The value of rent control extends beyond the walls of the homes of those whose costs are regulated. As Chew and Treuhaft say, there are “cascading” benefits to rent control that flow to the community at large. Renters who stay in their homes for longer periods are more likely to be civically engaged, an outcome that has powerful anti-crime effects. Children staying in the same school longer reduces the need for additional educational intervention. Economically, renters with controlled rent costs that allow them to stay in a community spend money there, boosting local businesses in a way that remotely-located real estate speculators of those same houses do not.

Without rent control, much-needed service-sector and caregiving workers are forced by high rents in cities to live far away from urban centers, often compelling them to rely on cars instead of mass transit for their commutes. In the eviction court where we work, we have many clients who are struggling to drive to the areas where the best-paying jobs are available. Under rent control, these workers can live in neighborhoods close to those jobs. Their capacity to be productive and reliable employees goes up when they are not faced with difficult commutes and working far from their children’s schools and care centers.

5.    Rent control has a long, successful history.

In addition to being a common practice in other nations that have largely avoided housing crises as acute as that in the U.S., rent control has a long and successful history in our country. Informal rent control policies during World War I were followed by official rent control systems widely implemented during World War II. Tenant advocacy during the second half of the 20^th century led to rent control being applied in nearly 200 cities.

U.S. courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court in a 1988 decision written by the conservative chief justice William Rehnquist, have repeatedly confirmed that rent control is fully legal. As the U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals wrote earlier this year in affirming the dismissal of landlords’ lawsuit challenging New York’s rent stabilization law, “Among other reasons, the (New York law) was enacted to permit low- and moderate-income people to reside in New York City—when they otherwise could not afford to do so.  It is beyond dispute that neighborhood continuity and stability are valid bases for enacting a law.”

As our courts keep confirming, our government represents the people, and thus has a strong interest in preventing private companies—who benefit heavily from government programs like infrastructure, research and development, and public safety-- from price-gouging us on the cost of a good that is necessary for our survival. That has led to  multiple forms of U.S. price controls past and present, including limits on the price of staples imposed by the governments of the colonies and the earliest states in the U.S. Current price controls include regulations on the amount companies can charge for goods like electricity, water, gas, and prescription drugs. Sweeping price controls on goods like food and other necessities were imposed during wartime on multiple occasions, by the Richard Nixon administration in the 1970’s, and are being proposed again today in Congress  and by economists.  

Today, over 180 municipalities in the U.S. impose some kind of rent control. That number includes large cities like New York, Los Angeles, and Washington D.C., and also smaller communities like Los Gatos, California and dozens of small towns and townships in New Jersey. As noted in Argument Eleven, new rent control laws are being passed with regularity, especially via voter referendums. In 2019, Oregon became the first to adopt statewide rent control, joining the District of Columbia, and multiple campaigns are currently active in other states and at the national level.

6.    Landlord lobbyists’ claims that rent control depresses housing supply don’t hold up.

It comes as no surprise that the National Multifamily Housing Council, whose membership includes the largest institutional aka corporate landlords, like Blackstone and Starwood Capital Group, fiercely resists rent control. The core of its lobbying and marketing attack is summarized on its website: “Rather than improving the availability of affordable housing, rent control has exacerbated shortages.” The National Association of Realtors, which led the nation with $84 million spent on lobbying in 2020, has chimed in, claiming rent control deters incentives to build more homes.

This is a self-interested rehashing of an Economics 101 argument: the lower the price of a good, the less incentive that for-profit providers will have to produce that good. Historically, many economists have subscribed to that very school of thought, with the late Swedish economist Assar Lindbeck saying in 1972 that rent control is the most efficient way to destroy a city, “next to  bombing.”

It is a dramatic image, and a superficially compelling argument. As the Revolving Door Project has pointed out, many media outlets parrot these landlord lobbyist arguments as established fact.  But it is not. It turns out there is a reason that Econ 101 is the beginning of the discipline’s study and not its capstone.

As housing writer Jerusalem Desmas noted in a Vox article explaining why she switched from a rent control critic to supporter, the same raise-price/reduce-supply formula was once the conventional economics wisdom resisting increases in the minimum wage. Then the data came in: actual analysis of minimum wage increases debunked the idea that that they significantly reduced the number of jobs available. The simplistic critique of raising lower-end salaries failed to account for variables that benefitted job growth and maintenance, including the facts that lower-wage workers (like renters) boost their local economies by spending their extra salaries closer to home. Employees who make higher wages stay on the job longer, and thus increase efficiency in the workplace. With the data now plentiful, increases in the minimum wage enjoy widespread support among economists.

Similarly, criticism of rent control fails to account for the entire picture. As a 2019 report from the Urban Institute said, “Rent control’s poor reputation in the economics literature has tended to rely more on models than on case studies or observed impacts.” Just like the critique of minimum wage increases dissolved as true empirical results rolled in, the landlord lobby’s sky-is-falling predictions of reduced housing supply are proving to be untrue.

Of course, landlord lobbyists still cite studies, including a widely-criticized Stanford University analysis written by researchers with ties to the landlord industry, that appear to support their argument that rent control will depress housing supply. Yet some of that quoted analysis is knocking down a straw man. A report commissioned and distributed by the National Association of Realtors, one of the leading landlord lobbying organizations, admits that many economists who are supposedly anti-rent control are opposing only strict rent price ceilings, not the system of controlled increases contemplated by all current rent control proposals. 

So it is not surprising that housing researchers from the University of California Berkeley,  the University of Minnesota, UCLA, and the University of Southern California have reviewed the evidence and concluded, as the UC Berkeley report flatly states, the argument that “rent control has negative effects on the development of new housing are generally not supported by the research.”

As described in detail by those reports, the comprehensive review by Chew and Treuhaft, and the court filings by multiple housing researchers supporting a recent successful defense of landlord lobbyists’ challenge to New York City’s rent control laws, studies of rent control in New Jersey, Los Angeles, Washington D.C., Boston and the Bay Area show no significant impact of rent control on construction rates. The summary, City University of New York economics professor J.W. Mason has stated: “Contrary to the predictions of the simple supply-and-demand model, none of these studies have found evidence that introducing or strengthening rent regulations reduces new housing construction, or that eliminating rent regulation increases construction. Most of these studies do, however, find that rent control is effective at holding down rents.”

Which, we should repeat from Argument Two, is the core aim of rent control: responding to the crisis caused by the rent being too damn high.

On the question of housing supply, it turns out that rent control could actually have a very positive impact. Rent control would block landlords and developers from generating huge profits by spiking rent prices—as they have recently, with rent on average rising nearly 20% in the last two years amidst widespread allegations of price-fixing. So, economists like University of Southern California’s Gary Painter say, rent control will spur rental housing owners to change their approach. “Developers have to go to a Plan B if they want to make more money,” Painter says. “Build more units.”

That result is particularly appealing given that an enormous contributor to the current U.S. housing supply problem is the over-development of luxury housing and landlords keeping units vacant in search of higher rents, instead of creating more affordable housing that is desperately needed. As Painter says, rent control would push market forces away from higher-end construction toward what is needed. A study of the effects of New Jersey’s rent control implementation showed that landlords were indeed motivated post-rent control to create more rental units.

The historical record shows the same. New York City’s most robust periods of building occurred during the 1920’s and mid-20^th century—when rent control regulations were strictly enforced.  After the landlord lobby convinced Massachusetts voters to repeal rent control in 1994, their construction-depressing claims were proven to be untrue: multifamily housing construction did not significantly increase. Rents went way up, though, as did evictions. All of which suggests that the landlord lobby’s continued anti-rent control argument is more about protecting their price-gouging profits than increasing supply.

7.    Landlord lobbyists’ claims that rent control harms housing conditions don’t hold up.

Landlords covet long-term, reliable renters who take care of the property. Those tenants reduce landlords’ costs significantly by allowing them to bypass the work and expense of turnover and avoidable maintenance.  

So it is ironic that landlord lobbyists like the National Apartment Association and the National Association of Realtors claim that rent control, which is proven to boost tenant stability, will reduce the quality of rental housing. These lobbyists’ argument is that rent control discourages landlord investment in maintenance and improvements. Putting aside the ethical issues invoked by landlords insisting they will refuse to maintain their rental properties if their profits are not unlimited, simple enforcement of existing housing codes should remedy any issues with landlords refusing to keep up their properties.

 As for improvements, landlords of rent-controlled units often find their tenants to be willing partners in home maintenance and remodeling. These tenants’ longer and more secure tenure incentivizes them to make their own improvements to the homes they plan to occupy for many years. As University of Virginia economist Edgar Olsen  concluded after his review of the data:  “There is no basis for economists’ strongly-held belief that rent control leads to worse maintenance.”

You know who is aware that rent control can actually lead to improved conditions? Landlord lobbyists. In a comprehensive 154-page report on rent control prepared in 2017 for the National Association of Realtors, law professor Valerie Werness states the following:

In some cases, rent control may increase long-term tenants’ incentives to renovate individual units. Common sense says that a tenant who knows he or she will be in the premises for a longer term is more likely to be willing to invest sweat equity and their own money into improving a unit. . .  As a side note, a 1988 study found no basis whatsoever for economists’ assertions that rent control leads to worse maintenance.

Kudos to Professor Werness for her integrity in a report written for an organization that vehemently resists rent control. Professor Werness also acknowledges other key evidence in support of rent control:  

·         removal of rent control in Massachusetts spiked rents and evictions;

·         rent control effectively limits rent increases and promotes household and neighborhood stability, especially in gentrifying neighborhoods;

·         rent control that allows for limited increases can actually exceed landlord costs and may not even reduce landlord profits;

·         evidence from New York and New Jersey does not support the landlord lobbyist argument that rent control depresses new construction.

The report is available on the NAR website here, at least for the moment. I downloaded a copy in the likely event that the landlord lobbyists decide to remove it.

8.    Rent control moves the needle toward housing being a human right, not just a commodity.

My housing policy priorities are shaped by the grim reality my students and I see each week in eviction courts.  We see single moms juggling multiple low-wage jobs and sick kids. We see people living with significant disabilities and fixed, very low incomes. For them the private for-profit housing market will never consistently meet their needs, nor will it meet the needs of millions of others like them. As housing experts like Alex Schwartz and Kirk McClure have written, these people simply cannot afford housing costs that cover private landlords’ own expenses, even with a limited profit.

For them, rent control is not the long-term answer. Instead, a permanent solution will be us to stop spending five times more dollars on government support for wealthy homeowners and landlords than we spend on housing subsidies for the poor. We can and should provide universal vouchers covering all who are eligible, we can and should build far more public housing and refurbish the public housing we already have. Other nations’ governments promise in their constitutions and statutes that housing is a human right and they fulfill that promise. Even here in the U.S., we did a far better job housing our people before the 1980’s. So it can be done.

But first we need to get there. The Overton Window, the idea that there is a spectrum of possible policy approaches that are widely acceptable to the public, is real. So is the fact that the window can be shifted by adopting interim policies that move toward reforms outside the current mainstream political agenda. Rent control shifts that window toward acceptance of housing as a human right, because it recognizes that it is disastrous and immoral to allow a person or entity to extract every possible nickel from someone else’s dire need for shelter. Rent control is not a substitute for greatly expanding our housing subsidies, but it is a step in that direction.

9.    Rent control helps those who need it the most.      

In its court brief supporting landlord lobbyists’ unsuccessful challenge of New York City’s rent stabilization law, the National Association of Realtors gave voice to a claim about rent control’s impact that is regularly levied by the NAR, the National Multifamily Housing Council and the National Apartment Association: “rent control frequently benefits the wealthy while doing little to help the poor.”

If true, this conclusion would certainly be ironic: wealthy landlord lobbyists are the parties truly concerned about the poor while organizations led or supported by low-income tenants reliably push for rent control. But it is not true. The claim of outsize benefits for wealthy renters is refuted by a consensus of housing scholars, as evidenced by the formal court response to this NAR brief filed on behalf of multiple housing law and policy professors. These scholars label the NAR claim “simply false.” Amee Chew and Sarah Treuhaft’s 2019 report cites two dozen studies to support the same, unequivocal conclusion:

“Rent control disproportionately benefits low-income tenants, seniors, people of color, women-headed households, persons living with disability and chronic illness, families with children, and others who have the least choice in the rental market and are most susceptible to rent gouging, harassment, eviction, and displacement”.

It is particularly important to note that those studies demonstrate that rent control benefits households of color, the majority of whom are renters. After generations of housing racism in the form of government-supported redlining, demolition of Black neighborhoods, displacement, and predatory lending , our nation has much to make up for. Rent control is not the full remedy to that injustice, but it puts us on the right path.

10. Rent control helping the non-poor is a feature, not a bug.    

The National Association of Realtors’ argument that rent control mostly helps the wealthy grossly overshoots the mark. But there is some truth underneath the histrionics: rent control does benefit people who are not poor. That is a good thing.

History shows us that means-tested government programs that benefit only the poor are doomed to be perpetual targets of political attacks and middle and upper-class resentment. That has led to cut-backs in programs like SNAP (Food Stamps), Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF), and child tax credits. Compare the political vulnerability of those programs with universal benefits like Social Security, the so-called third rail of U.S. politics—touch it and you die. Or look at another universal program, Medicare, so popular that healthcare reform debates in the early 2000’s featured seniors paradoxically demanding that “government keep your hands off my Medicare.”

Similarly, social movement history shows that a core requirement for a successful movement is a broad base of popular support. That base often includes higher-income people who are often more likely to be politically active and influential. Forty-four million households in the U.S.—more than a third of the population--rent their homes. Renters form the majority in many of our largest cities, and there are millions of rural renting households as well.  So it should be no surprise that rent control proposals that will benefit people across the income spectrum have been receiving a winning level of popular support: 

11. Rent control is winning support across the country.

As noted in Argument Five, rent control has a long and impactful history in the U.S. That history is still being made, with rent control in place currently in 182 municipalities and the state of Oregon. At the national level, the People’s Action Homes Guarantee campaign is leading a coalition of 250 organizations calling on the Biden administration to impose rent control on all properties financed by government-backed mortgages, a measure that would apply to one of every four rental units in the country. They are also demanding that Biden require all states and cities who seek coveted Community Development Block Grants commit to rent control. Similarly, the national community organizing coalition Center for Popular Democracy calls for rent control at a national level.

Across states and municipalities, there is a flurry of ongoing rent control activity, including vibrant campaigns in California, Florida, and Michigan.  In 2021, St. Paul, Minnesota voters approved a rent control ordinance. That same year, Boston mayor Michelle Wu was elected on a platform of rent control, which enjoys a two-to-one level of support among likely voters in a Boston poll taken earlier this year. In Illinois, the Lift the Ban campaign is pushing to reverse the 1997 statewide ban on rent control, passed as part of the landlord resistance campaign discussed more in Argument Twelve. The existence of rent control laws that target mobile home parks, such as they successful campaign in Humboldt County, California, suggests there is fertile ground for a powerful coalition among the millions of rural renters and the urban residents where renting is the most common.

One of the most impressive recent victories for rent control occurred in November, 2020, when 57% of Portland, Maine voters handed a big victory to a rent control measure,. The successful campaign was a dramatic reversal from a nearly two-to-one defeat of a similar proposal three years earlier, a change that organizers credited to a coalition of housing, environmental, and labor advocates. Momentum seems to be building across the country, with the November 2022 mid-term elections featuring rent control victories in multiple cities in Maine, California, and Florida. A Bloomberg News headline after the mid-term election said it well: “As Housing Costs Spike, Voters Look for Hope in Rent Control.”

12. Responsible landlords don’t need to fear rent control.

Landlord lobbyists have repurposed tenants’ rents to fight tooth-and-nail against rent control proposals. Analysis from the California-based advocacy group Housing is a Human Right chronicles over $175 million spent by landlord lobbyists in that state alone fighting against rent control proposals. Landlord lobbyists have filed expensive court actions trying to stop rent control laws, citing the perpetually-rejected argument that government rent regulation amounts to an uncompensated taking that violates the Fifth Amendment. Landlord lobbyists prop up the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) model legislation designed to block cities from passing rent control laws, and the industry spent over $100 million in federal lobbying alone in 2020 and 2021.

The landlord money has had an impact. California statewide rent control ballot proposals have been defeated, in large part due to expensive and misleading ad campaigns by landlord lobbyists. The ALEC-drafted legislation that pre-empts cities from passing rent control has passed in 37 states.  In the 1990’s, landlord lobbyists funded successful efforts to repeal rent control in Massachusetts and weaken it in New York City. After St. Paul voters in 2021 voted to limit rent increases, the city council caved into landlord and developer pressure to override the people’s votes.

But does all this spending really benefit landlords whose business models are  grounded in renting good-conditions properties at a price that ensures a fair return for them? After all, rent control guarantees those landlords predictable, profitable revenue, pursuant to the U.S. Supreme Court’s requirement that regulation of rents guarantee landlords a “fair return.”  All of the current rent control proposals are designed to allow for regular increases, and a study analyzing two decades of New York City rent control showed that the allowed rent increases outpaced landlord costs.

 Yet, for one growing sector of the landlord industry, a “fair return” is not enough. The anti-rent control lobbying is funded predominately by institutional landlords who are in the business of housing speculation that destabilizes neighborhoods and spikes prices with the help of a shared algorithm program that has led to antitrust allegations. These mega-landlords are more likely to poorly maintain property and evict their tenants than local, smaller landlords, all while turning their top executives into multi-billionaires who are notorious for avoiding paying taxes.

Those types of toxic landlords are likely to get their wings clipped by rent control. But the smaller, local, responsible landlords will enjoy stability of renters and a guaranteed return on their investments. They should give rent control a closer look.

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So, that was a lot! But hopefully this article provides a good introduction to the benefits of rent control, the fast, vast, and built-to-last reform so desperately needed by our eviction-court clients and millions of others across the nation. Look soon for a more formalized version of this article in an academic publication. That article will have footnotes instead of hyperlinks, along with some more exploration of the different types of rent control.