[stale2002]

The problem with rent control is that it causes developers to build less.

This is certainly a problem that will happen in a purely competitive market.

But the SF housing market is NOT a competitive market. The bottleneck for developers to build more houses is the government that prevents them from doing so.

So i'd recommend focusing on getting rid of the other barriers to more housing before focusing on rent control.

Or in other words, rent control is indeed a bottleneck. But the thing with bottle necks is that only the smallest bottleneck matters.

Getting rid of the less bad bottleneck of rent control will do absolutely nothing unless the OTHER bottlenecks are addressed first.

[crdoconnor]

>The problem with rent control is that it causes developers to build less.

Yet New York's highest level of house building occurred under a period of very strict rent controls (50s).

The level to which rent control restricts building wildly exaggerated.