alt Hacker NewsI find that rent control is a good idea in theory, but leads to a lot of deadweight loss. As a former renter, what I really wanted was a predictable cap on rent increases. For folks who are long-term renters, without controls and predictability, their only option would be to move every few years, which is incredibly disruptive.
From my understanding, European countries tend to have restrictions on what lease renewals can look like and with declining home ownership (and ownership being priced out for many), I think we should look at European models for real solutions to our housing crisis.
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Rent control is not good in theory, it's the most universally hated policy among economists because it has so many horrible unintended effects on housing development and maintenance.
This is an important distinction. Most "rent control" laws are intended to be "rent stabilization" not outright price fixing. Their goal is to prevent insane swings in rent happening too quickly, which disrupts families and local economies (and even infrastructure development).
But the worst/most aggressively laws are always used as the examples, skewing the conversation to edge cases and ignoring the fact that these laws can and do take hundreds of different forms.
rent control (which realistically for all but the most idealist is some sort of capped rent increase policy) can only work if its done and owned by the state/nation. It can't work for private sector as the ROI will be relatively poorer on doing that vs many other investments so it'll actively disincentivise investment into more rental housing long term & in short/medium term disincentivise all but necessary capital/maintenance investment as it'll quickly erode whatever small return they're making on their rental investment.
State/National government are far more likely to stomach lower ROI than the private sector because they can arguably have a more holistic view of what their investment is. However, to be able tod that you also need robust finances in government which has certainly not been the case in most developed western economies since the 80s