In February, 2019, Oregon’s legislature passed rent-control
legislation limiting rent increases to 7% annually plus inflation. New York’s legislature
strengthened the existing local rent-control regulations in New York City.
Roughly six months later, California’s legislature passed rent-control
legislation limiting annual rent increases to 5% after inflation and
strengthening other tenant protections.[1]
Not even the largest landlord group and the California Business Roundtable had
opposed the legislation in spite of the fact that rent-control even as a
concept flies in the face of the free-market ideology that has been so popular
in America. Indeed, economists “from both the left and the right have a
well-established aversion to rent control, arguing that such policies ignore
the message of rising prices, which is to build more housing.”[2]
Accordingly, only four of the American states (and Washington, D.C.) had some
kind of local rent-control. So what accounts for the rent-control fever that
had taken hold in 2019? I want to point to the immediate context then in
California, and then to a more theoretical explanation that calls for distinguishing
shelter from real-estate investing.
The full essay is at "California Rent Control."
1. Conor
Dougherty and Luis Ferré-Sadurni, “California
Approves Statewide Rent Control to Ease Housing Crisis,” The New York Times, September 12, 2019.