Resisting rent control

James Simpson

Due to the high cost of housing here in Burlington, many residents might find the idea of rent control attractive.

But rent control is bad economic policy, and would hurt the people it is supposed to help.

Rent control is a government-imposed price ceiling on rent. Landlords would not legally be able to charge more than the mandated price cap.

However, there is near unanimity among economists that rent control is a harmful policy.

In a 1992 survey of 464 economists published in the American Economic Review, 93 percent of economists agreed that rent control would “reduce the quantity and quality of housing available.”

There are a couple reasons for this.

First, rent control discourages the construction of new, affordable residential property.

When there is a cap on what landlords are allowed to charge, the profit they stand to earn is reduced.

This causes investors to spend their money on more profitable types of property, such as commercial property or housing for the wealthy who are able to buy their property outright.

Second, the reduced profits landlords can earn lead to  deterioration in housing. When landlords cannot charge market prices, they have less disposable income to spend on  maintaining their properties.

When they can’t charge a higher price, there is simply no incentive to improve their properties.

Third, rent control leads to housing shortages.

At a lower rental price, more tenants want to rent apartments, but landlords might only want to rent out their apartments at a higher price.

While some people are willing to pay more than the rent cap, that choice is removed and everyone ends up competing for the same apartments at or below the cap, leading to a shortage.

This mismatch between supply and demand is what leads to decreased residential construction, housing deterioration and housing shortages in rent-controlled markets.

To help alleviate the cost of housing here in Burlington, more housing should be built in order to increase the supply.

One thing that should not be done is artificially controlling prices, because doing so only hurts consumers and the economy.