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by fxleach
2561 days ago
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I agree with some of your points but I think you're misguided on a couple. >because people won’t move if their rent stays “affordable,” This is the issue rent control is trying to solve. There will always be rich people that can afford to live in the city, and they basically raise the bar on what developers and landlords think people can afford. They stay comfy while the rest basically pour all their paycheck into rent, forgo savings, and feel stuck. What about the rest of the people that work in the city with median income (or lower) jobs? They get pushed out further and further from city centres. In turn, that creates enormous strain on public transit and traffic congestion becomes unbearable. That being said I don't believe rent control is the proper solution, but it's the only one most people agree on right now. I'd like to hear about more solutions if there are any. |
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I don't think you fully understand the issue. You focus on one specific case: richer renters displacing poorer renters because they're willing to pay more. But there is so much more to the housing market, and to people moving from one home to another than that.
Maybe I got children, and I want a bigger apartment. Maybe my children moved out, and I now want a smaller one. Maybe I changed jobs, and I want to move to a different part of the city closer to work. Maybe I want to move to a different city where I got offered a job. And so on.
In a "normal" housing market, you can do all of these things. I can get an apartment in any part of the city within a week, because people move around all the time and leave empty apartments. I don't have to be richer than them, I will pay the same price they used to pay. In a normal housing market, people move around, which means other people can also move around. In a housing market that gives special privileges to current renters, people get "entrenched" in their apartment and don't want to leave for any reason. So these apartments never appear on the market.
In my city, there are rent controls for certain apartments (fortunately very small percentage). I know a few people who live in such apartments, and most of them never intend to move for any reason (unless the rent controls are revoked, which might happen). It is not because they consider this apartment the best possible place for them to be. It's because they don't want to lose their privileges. A renter in a rent-controlled home has an extremely strong artificial incentive to stay exactly where they are. This is inefficient, because as a result, people can't move around.
Now you do have a point, in the sense that it might cause people with lower incomes to be "pushed out". I am not familiar with Berlin, I know my city is fully mixed usage and there is not some huge dropoff in rent as you move away from the center (in fact, some parts further away are more expensive than some nearer). Also jobs are not concentrated in the center, so it's not like most people are commuting into the city center every day. There is pretty much everything everywhere.