Hmmm, rent control has some problems, but your critique is missing a pretty big part of the picture. We need to look at what the average rents are, not the ave

Hmmm, rent control has some problems, but your critique is missing a pretty big part of the picture. We need to look at what the average rents are, not the average rents of current available units. Rent control reduces the former dramatically, but probably increases the latter. In other words, a lot of people are paying a lot lower rent than they would otherwise have to pay, but a lot of non-residents will have to pay higher rents in the future. I used to be anti-rent control until I thought about both sides of the issue. Rent control can make sense if your goal is to "reward" long time residents, but it may discourage new residents. From a policy perspective you have to ask yourself "Does our city have a problem attracting new residents." SF does not have this problem. But there is a problem of long term residents being forced to move. Rent control alleviates the latter problem.