Landlords Are Pushing the Supreme Court to End Rent Control

Rent control is dumb policy anyways.<p>Now how can we get rid of nimby rule? Local governments have way too much influence on development, for better or worse.<p>Perhaps sufficiently large development proposals must be entertained by the entire city or town rather than being unilaterally decided by a board - that seems like a sufficient compromise (at the expense of speed, but development is slow anyway given the appeals).<p>Of course that’s not a perfect solution either since there are towns in which home ownership rate is almost 100% and thus they would be most incentivized to not allow any development even if they all voted at the expense of the neighbors shouldering the development burden.

This is the natural consequence of Citizen United (such a dishonest name). When those with money is allowed to leverage their wealth to disproportionately affect legal proceedings and lawmaking, it is just a step towards dystopia.

Watch us get the worst of all world policy, keep restrictive zoning so the housing supply remains low but eliminate rent control so the demand translates directly to higher landlord profits.

Man they&#x27;re really hammering away at this &quot;billionaire benefactor&quot; line, as if the public debate on this topic is over and national consensus has been reached, as if this whole narrative wasn&#x27;t contrived in the last 6 months.<p>The article doesn&#x27;t go into detail about the claims of the plaintiffs (called &quot;lobbyists&quot; as if the court can he lobbied), I wonder why. I really want to know what their constitutional argument is, because I don&#x27;t see rent control by states and cities being unconstitutional. Unfortunately this article is devoid of substance and is just a propaganda piece to normalize the &quot;billionaire benefactor&quot; narrative.

Unpopular opinion: rent controls should be used only in times of drastic changes in housing supply or demand, and have short time limits equal to what it would take to resolve a housing crisis. Sudden change in demand or natural disaster destroys 20% of housing stock: 3-5 years of rent control. Otherwise we are just using politics to torque the market, &quot;taking&quot; capital from owners&#x2F;landlords, and generating non-market incentives for renters. (see: master tenants, secret sub-leases, etc.)

Landlords -&gt; lobbyists of large real estate investment corporations. One of the biggest social crimes is enabling housing ownership companies to become large investment vehicles.

Ok, now invalidate Euclidean zoning.

Good. People think rent control helps poor and middle class people find a good place to live, and punishes those evil, evil landlords. What it does in practice is discourage building new housing, and encourages evil, evil landlords to convert existing housing into condos they can sell. It drives people out of the city.

Rent control probably should be banned.<p>But by the same token, proceeds from rent should be taxed at the full land value of property, so that the only profit from rent is from improvements. The tax proceeds should then be used to subsidize rent, if necessary.

Finally, something that should actually help fix the housing crisis.

Do the arguments against rent control also apply to affordable housing unit construction mandates? Seems like they would.

This is a great way to get pitchforks.

Not gonna lie... Pro-renter policies in my state definitely dissuade me from renting. It&#x27;s scary to think you might not be able to get your house back from a dishonest renter without going to hell and back.