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'Renters Are Struggling': Economists Back Tenant-Led Push for Federal Rent Control
(www.commondreams.org)
this post was submitted on 06 Aug 2023
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There are very few things almost every academic economist agrees on. One of the things that almost everyone agrees on is that rent control does not work. Im shocked they got 30 economists to sign on.
The following is apropos as it even addresses the specific policies of SF and NYC mentioned here. If you need to see a progressive voice go look at Emmanuel Saez as his work is what Sanders and Warren based their tax plans on.
https://www.kentclarkcenter.org/surveys/rent-control/
Rent control is a horrific idea. Over the long term is disincentivizes the construction of housing. If you want to bring the costs of housing down then you need to build more housing ideally multi family units not kore luxury housing which is what rent control creates incentives to build.
OK but we have more empty houses than homeless people. We don't need more houses. We need to stop wasting resources for the sake of capitalism and stop letting people die for it as well. There is going to be a point where people start setting fire to vacant houses in protest. It is amazing what millions of desperate people will do when their screams of frustration go unheard long enough.
This is the chaos that our leaders secretly want. Otherwise they would have to be abysmally stupid. There is no excuse for ignorance in the information age.
This is true, but very few of those houses exist where homelessness is a major problem. Location plays a huge role in someone's life and we can't just ship everyone that's homeless or struggling to a dying small town in the US.
No we have more vacant homes which is not the same thing as available or usable. A house that no one lives in and is being sold is counted as vacant. An unrented apartment listed for rent is vacant
Your premise is based on a flawed concept if what vacant housing means.
Economists work for banks not for us. Their models have no connection to the real world. They support bailouts but not student loan debt reduction. Says all you really need to know about them.
Using SF and NYC as the main examples kinda distorts things as these are both some of the most expensive, developed, and dense parts of the country where development costs are staggeringly high. Something not working there doesn't mean it doesn't work anywhere else. The rate of increase in property/rental costs is unsustainable.
They are perfect examples as rent control did NOTHING to impact the costs of housing there.
Are you an economist?
Or did you just see a supply and demand curve and think that's all there is to it?
If you studied economics beyond the 101 level, you'd know the supply and demand curve is a theoretical concept that doesn't actually exist in the real world because the requirements for it are impossible. Supply and demand most definitely exist, but it's more of a fuzzy force kind of thing not clean lines on a graph. Realistically, it's more like fuzzy splotches on the graph instead of clean lines.
And there are multiple levels to it as well. Cities have to compete with other cities to attract businesses and businesses would prefer to be in a city where they don't have to pay someone $100K per year to sweep the floors. Which might happen if that's the pay level required to live in a city. You could get into a yo-yo situation where a city becomes unaffordable, people and businesses leave, causing the rent prices to drop, attracting people an businesses back, causing it to by unaffordable again, etc, etc. This instability comes at an economic cost that's greater than the inefficiencies caused by rent control.
You see an economy isn't just one simple supply and demand curve. You might want to consider that economists might be aware of some factors you aren't aware of.
No, I did not just see asupply curve nor did the dozens of economists polled. The fact is it has failed to make housing more available or decreased the cost of housing when implemented.
Arguing for rent control is the economic equivalent if arguing against climate change. Pretty much everyone is in agreement on the issue.
Aggregate supply and aggregate demand.
Boom. Roasted.
It's extremely difficult to get someone who only understands Econ 101 to grasp the idea of competing economic inefficiencies. Conservative think tanks have been on a rather successful crusade to ensure that de-regulation is only good. So, it's difficult to convince someone that higher taxes on "job creators" leads to a better, less expensive life for everybody else.