What are the effects of rent control, both good and bad?
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if there are too many residents and too few houses, you have three options:
1. build more housing
2. kick out residents (not sure how you’d do that)
3. figure out a way to distribute the limited houses to the too-many residents
“rent control” is #3 with the rough heuristic of, “whoever has been living here the longest gets a house”
this has the effect of not addressing the root cause (supply/demand imbalance), preventing younger/new residents from moving in, and removing incentives to build new housing
you can extrapolate why that would be bad, for example when new parents want to move closer to the grandparents but can’t because they’re priced out. it also shields existing residents (who can vote on local issues) from housing supply problems since their rent isn’t changing to communicate the severity of the issue. the hypothetical new residents (who would move in if they could afford it) can’t vote in local elections (they don’t live there) so you can see why few of these situations have resolved themselves
edit: I forgot to list pros! the main pro is that you don’t disrupt communities. if someone owns a local shop, has been living there for 20 years, etc. then kicking them out first disrupts both their life and the health of the community. so it’s a decent heuristic if you’re forced to pick one, but it’s the maybe-best of a bunch of bad options
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