The goal of rent control is punish or limit the landlord class's rent seeking in situations where there is an upper limit to development already in place either structurally or legally or some combination thereof.That ends up not helping to increase the stock of affordable housing in high cost of living areas, but rather to decrease it.
Oregon is a large state. I once lived there. There were a lot of areas where development certainly had not reached any limits in terms of either available land or legal restrictions that would prevent more of it. I suspect it is still true today that many places have not hit that kind of limit (though less today, of course, than in the past). Those areas should not be subject to rent control. It's not needed for them. So the law is overly inclusive and burdens landlords that are not part of the problem being targeted. Rent control should be targeted at only those areas where the affordable housing problems really exist if you are going to do it at all. But even in those areas, rent control is going to drive some landlords to convert existing rental units to something else, lowering the available housing stock. And if, as you say, there isn't room for additional development to fill that gap, there ends up being a net loss of units available for renters. So some renters get the benefit of the cap on their rents at the cost of less units being available to those that need them. That's the trade off. IMO generally that's not a good trade-off and other approaches to affordable housing ought to be considered.The goal of rent control is punish or limit the landlord class's rent seeking in situations where there is an upper limit to development already in place either structurally or legally or some combination thereof.
In the case of oregon, it limits the virtual monopoly power that arises from the upper limits of development that are already in place for zoning and ecological reasons that are already or soon will be bumped up against by much of Oregon.
This isn't the electoral college - acres don't vote.There were a lot of areas where development certainly had not reached any limits in terms of either available land or legal restrictions that would prevent more of it.
So all the claims from rent control proponents that it is about affordable housing are all lies? The proponents are knowingly deceiving the public on that? That doesn't speak well of them at all, does it?Rent control isn't about affordable housing. It is a punishment.
That is very revealing. They don't care if it is good policy. They don't care if it works. They don't care that they might actually be screwing themselves too by leaving a shortage of housing. They just care about that pound of flesh. And as long as they can "stick it to the man" they'll be happy even though they ended up leaving themselves no available places to rent? That's incredibly stupid, but then I have long known some voters are stupid. Perhaps there are more stupid voters than I thought.It is an opening shot against the ownership class, and there are going to be more.
Renters don't want good policy, they want a pound of flesh.