> In a free rental market, you would see some current SF residents leave because they're not willing to pay market rates, but the market rate would drop as a re

> In a free rental market, you would see some current SF residents leave because they're not willing to pay market rates, but the market rate would drop as a result. In other words, long time residents would move out to make space for the people who want to move in and are willing to pay for the privilege. I don't get why there's so much agreement here that that's the desirable outcome. Allowing people to be quickly, dynamically uprooted out of their homes as price volatility swings up and down in different areas -- that has a lot of real human (read: economic) costs associated with it that are not obviously to account for. For example, the difficulty that children will face by being uprooted from their schools and friendships. Obviously the cost-benefit of any particular program requires very careful analysis, but I think there's quite some value in the idea of stabilizing rent to allow people agility to make the appropriate life changes that correspond with changing housing.