Can Rent Control Be Abolished?
Rent control makes housing less affordable to anyone seeking housing in a rent-controlled market. Even people who already have a “great deal” under rent control become prisoners of their own apartment. They can never move because it means being thrown into the shadow market, where prices may be three or four times as high for an almost identical apartment. In Europe, where rent control governs even larger sectors of the market, the result has been the continent’s famed “labor immobility,” where moving a factory across town may mean losing half the work force. This huge differential between the regulated market and the shadow market strikes terror into the hearts of a rent-controlled population and fuels the fires against deregulation. But this fear is based on the illusion that shadow-market prices are actual market prices. Even landlords make the same mistake. They often assume that an end to regulation will enable them to double and triple rents, whereas the overall effect would be f
