[darksaints]

Speaking as the SO of a major property management company exec operating in Portland, no it wasn't a policy that benefits landlords. Not in the slightest. More competition and lower prices are a landlord's and developer's worst nightmare.

And yes, due to the scale of development, rents are lower than they expected when they built. Your prices were gonna go up regardless, and the scale of development that happened actually kept prices down.

[exterrestrial]

As I said, rents are higher than ever before. Why should renters care if investors are exploiting them for as much profit as they originally wanted to? My point stands: rents are higher than ever before. Not lower.

[darksaints]

Before rent control passed, this was what was happening.

https://reason.com/2018/10/10/booming-construction-and-falli...

> Portland added 4,419 unit of completed housing in 2016, a slight increase from the roughly 4,365 it added in 2015, which combined is more than all the housing units added in the five years prior to 2014, according to the Portland Housing Bureau's 2017 annual report.

> Year-over-year average rents declined by a full 1.2 percent in the city of Portland, with average rents dropping to $1,140 per month for a median one-bedroom apartment, according to the yearly rent report from Apartment List. It's a similar story in Seattle, with Apartment List data showing rents declining 1.6 percent from where they were in 2017. The median monthly rent for a one-bedroom apartment in Seattle is $1,346.

When you don't build more, rents go up. When you start to build enough, rents go down. It's pretty fucking simple. In fact, it is econ 101.