The biggest myth is that this kind of stuff actually helps the less-powerful. In reality, it just means they are hurt twice: government artificially suppressing supply, and government manipulating prices which has bad side effects for mamy even if its good for a few.
Also, in reality, the powerful often don't get hurt, and arbitrary market manipulations just introduce new ways for them to get an advantage somehow.
In the spirit of furious agreement, yes the best option would obviously be not to suppress construction.
Just because one interest group wants stupid things to happen that benefit them in the short term doesn't make it a good idea to go open season on stupid things. The goal should always be to improve the state of affairs; not to spread the pain around.
Everyone bar no-one needs institutions stuffed with people who make sensible long-term decisions. The best way to get that is to always pressure them in that direction. Bending to political expedience encourages people who make bad decisions; not a good strategy.
source?
Visible benefits; invisible costs. Great politics.
Who you don't see are the people outside looking in that want an apartment but can't find one, or can't afford one, or need to sign a new lease at a very high rent.
Rent control doesn't unequivocally help current renters. It also keeps them stuck in one place for a long time, even when it's not a great fit for them.
And pretty much every economist says rent control raises rents and lowers quality overall, hurting those trying to move in.
There are way more renters than owners. Prices have been going up more than 5%. Owners are most definitely not the "less-powerful" here.
So in reality the gov't might be artificially surpressing supply (though it's mostly due to owner pushback), but the "manipulating prices" (trying to keep rent growth from getting out of control) is helping less-powerful.
I get the point about how this can default owners to just increase prices. Well they were going to be doing that anyways! Especially with surpressed supply!
Arguing that "overall price increases with this law" > "overall prices increase without this law" is non-intuitive and probably just not true.
(thought experiment: if raising 5% every year with the law made sense, why would it not make sense to raise it 5% every year without the law? This law doesn't prevent other owners from offering _lower_ rents, if the market calls for it)
If you don't raise it now then you can no longer do it later in the event that taxes or mortgage interest rates or some other cost increases. That creates a major risk for the landlord, which most of them would prefer to mitigate by raising rents even if it means apartments going vacant longer. And when they're all similarly situated, they all do the same thing, which means the tenants can't avoid the rent increases by moving to another apartment, which allows for more of the landlords to get in on the rent increase without incurring vacancies.
