[jules]

It's not a question of blame, it's a question of the results of a particular policy. Rent control creates an incentive for landlords to bully their tenants. You can create another government agency to police this, but in reality that is extremely difficult because you can do a lot of bad things legally, and trying to police that will have negative unintended consequences in itself. It also causes bad behavior that would be impossible or incredibly undesirable to police, such as simply neglecting the state of the housing and shared spaces. We've already learned decades ago that rent controlled housing rapidly deteriorates.

Perhaps another example: the drug war. Making marihuana illegal creates criminal activity other than just selling it. You could say "okay, so just police that", but that's not so easy in the real world, and we've seen the negative consequences of attempting it.

A lot of problems would be solved if politicians thought less about the intentions of their policies and more about the incentives those policies create. Too many policies make bad behavior rational. Even worse is that once you do that it's not just that good people start behaving badly, but also that bad actors out compete the good ones. A good policy aligns self interest with the common interest.

[noobermin]

You're going to have to help me. I don't know what you mean by "bad behavior that would be[...]undesirable to police." It seems very abstract, and because of that, is less than convincing. Please give me an explicit example of that.

For example, how does, "rent-control => neglect the state of housing" That happens already without rent-control.

[anthuswilliams]

It's true that there are many landlords who provide ill-managed, neglected housing even in areas without rent control. However, rent control exacerbates that problem, in my opinion, for two reasons:

1) It incentivizes the landlord to shorten the amount of time a particular tenant will inhabit the property, because it is only when a tenant leaves and a new one comes in that the landlord is free to jack up the rent to market rates.

2) It compels the landlord to lower his expenses in order to ensure that his investment stays profitable. Ordinarily, a landlord is constrained by a desire to keep a property that will attract and retain good tenants, but since that is no longer (as much of) a factor, he will avoid making repairs and enhancements except in emergency situations where the law requires him to.

Source: landlord (albeit one who has never worked in an area with rent control policies)