Yeah, that's not a ringing endorsement of the policy. And the bill in question simply lets towns and cities impose rent controls at their own discretion. I cannot in good conscience support that bill. It's a bad idea that will make the housing problem in Massachusetts worse with no guarantee that it will have any positive impacts.

The perfect is the enemy of the good. You got more housing.

Which is not what the proposed bill would do. The bill would give cities and towns the ability to impose rent controls. Not temporary emergency rent controls while they also increased supply. Just rent controls. Now, are you for or against the proposed bill? Because I'm against it.

I'm not arguing for the status quo, or for no government intervention. I think that we should use government policy to subsidize construction. What you seem to be advocating for is socialized housing, which tends to be inefficient. It's hard for central planners to know where to build the right amounts of the right types of housing. Markets allocate these resources much more efficiently. That's why even social democracies in Western Europe still have private housing markets.

I'm trying to get you to understand that imposing price controls exacerbates the problem in the long run by making the supply problem worse. No one wants to supply the demand for rent controlled apartments, so new rent controlled apartments don't get built and existing rent controlled apartments get converted into condos which further decreases supply and makes the problem worse.

Your heart is in the right place, but the solution you're advocating for doesn't work. We see this both in economic theory (if you artificially decrease the price of a good you will artificially decrease the quantity supplied, basic econ 101), and in empirical evidence when we examine places where rent control has been tried.

It exacerbates the problem in the long term which makes it a poor policy choice. We should subsidize housing construction rather than imposing rent controls. Learn to draw conclusions based on what you've read.

My Dude, please take your own advice:

"We find that landlords actively respond to the imposition of rent control by converting their properties to condos and TICs or by redeveloping the building in such as a way as to exempt it from the regulations. In sum, we find that impacted landlords reduced the supply of available rental housing by 15 percent. Further, we find that there was a 25 percent decline in the number of renters living in units protected by rent control, as many buildings were converted to new construction or condos that are exempt from rent control.

"This reduction in rental supply likely increased rents in the long run, leading to a transfer between future San Francisco renters and renters living in San Francisco in 1994. In addition, the conversion of existing rental properties to higher-end, owner-occupied condominium housing ultimately led to a housing stock increasingly directed toward higher income individuals. In this way, rent control contributed to the gentrification of San Francisco, contrary to the stated policy goal. Rent control appears to have increased income inequality in the city by both limiting displacement of minorities and attracting higher income residents."

That's not what the paper you cited says.

Or you're just misunderstanding the nature of the problem. High prices aren't the problem. High prices are a symptom of insufficient supply, which is the real problem. If you want to leverage government policy to fix the problem, attack the insufficient supply instead of attacking the high price. If you create subsidies or tax breaks for people building the type of housing you want to see built (in Boston that would be high density, small and medium sized apartments), this will alleviate the problem of high prices.

If there is an emergency (such as a 50-100% surge in rents due to a global pandemic), then price controls can be used as an emergency measure, so long as they are explicitly stated as emergency measures and capped by an appropriate time limit. If you don't do that you risk spooking builders and exacerbating the supply problem.

Price controls aren't a minor piece of basic decency, price controls are drastic market interventions. The whole point of a market is price discovery. What is the proper price for a 1 bedroom apartment in Boston? You don't know the answer to that. Neither do I. Neither does anyone in this thread or in the government or in the whole wide world. The only way to arrive at the correct answer to that question is to establish a free and fair market and let the market discover the price. That is the essential function of every market for every good, and we judge how well a market is functioning by how efficiently it arrives at that equilibrium price. A price control destroys this utterly. So that's why a price control would break the market, because that's what price controls do. It is not somehow the market's fault.

The paper you cited saying rent control works actually says that rent control is counterproductive. The goal of rent control is to reduce rents, says so right in the name. Unfortunately, it doesn't work very well.

>The effects of rent control expansion on tenants landlords and inequality.

From the abstract of that article:

"we find rent control limits renters' mobility by 20 percent and lowers displacement from San Francisco. Landlords treated by rent control reduce rental housing supplies by 15 percent by selling to owner-occupants and redeveloping buildings. Thus, while rent control prevents displacement of incumbent renters in the short run, the lost rental housing supply likely drove up market rents in the long run, ultimately undermining the goals of the law."

https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/aer.20181289

Rent control rigs the game in a way that creates a series of perverse incentives. If you imagine renting like a game of musical chairs, rent control stops the music. Permanently. It artificially divides renters into winners and losers. The winners are the people who manage to land a rent controlled apartment when the music stops. The losers are everyone else.

Now the losers are really stuck. It becomes incredibly hard to find a rent controlled apartment. The prices for everything that's left go up even more, and the incentive to build new housing plummets. Why would you build high density housing if the big bad government is going to come in and tell you what you can charge?

Even the winners are hurt, because they can't move. The rent controlled apartment they've managed to land becomes a trap. If they move, they're going to join the losers in their desperate struggle to find a rent controlled apartment. So they stay in the same apartment long after it becomes the right place for them to live.

I do agree that the housing market in Boston in particular and Massachusetts in general is in bad straits. But rent control will only solve the problem for a fraction of the populace. And even then it will come with real downsides. The rest of the populace will suffer even more.

...And neither do I. But landlords do need to be able to evict people, and they do need to get a fair market return for their properties.

The regulations that I would like to see gone are the regulations that make it harder to build, but I don't pretend to be an expert on housing policy. I just know that the current problem is one of inadequate supply, and that rent control would exacerbate the problem.

We want the same things. It's just about what we think is the right road to get there.

To add on to that, in many places the historical buildings have got to go. Especially in the Boston metro.

Also, we need to stop large universities like Harvard, MIT, Northeastern, and Boston University (my alma mater) from buying any more land. They're like tumors.

Came here to remind people that high rents are driven by basic supply and demand. Too many people are chasing too few rental properties. Rent control ultimately makes this problem worse by artificially decreasing the price of rental units, therefore artificially decreasing the quantity supplied.

I'm a registered Democrat who voted for Elizabeth Warren in the primaries, but when it comes to rent in Massachusetts, we should take a page from the Republicans and deregulate. If you really want the government involved in this, create government subsidies/tax breaks for the construction of the types of housing that you'd like to see built.

Yeah, I think I pretty much agree with that. I think that it's worth remembering that prison itself is terrible at accomplishing the goals that we set out for it. It isn't great at deterring crime. It isn't great at rehabilitating prisoners. It isn't even great at removing dangerous individuals from society. So if you're opposed to this, what would you like to see happen instead? The status quo isn't doing a great job.

If I'm reading it right, it's not about becoming an organ donor, it's about donating an organ, straight up. I don't think it's an unethical offer to make either, but I think the terms are more stringent than simply becoming an organ donor on your license.