If it otherwise breaks even, when you consider that a significant portion of the people it helps aren’t particularly in need of help, it seems like it easily be

If it otherwise breaks even, when you consider that a significant portion of the people it helps aren’t particularly in need of help, it seems like it easily becomes an overall net negative on the city. I also have a hard time supporting it just in principal - it restricts mobility, disincentivises renting out property at all, and puts young people and immigrants and anyone else who didn’t happen to get here first at a disadvantage. Then the only housing those folks can get is market rate housing, which we now just call luxury housing as a shorthand even though it’s the only possible housing, and now we can write them off as rich assholes and pretend there’s not a housing problem. Obviously the causality of these issues is complex, and it’s not all the fault of rent control, but it does seem to be a major pillar of this whole crazy mess we’ve created here. One last point — think about how big of a deal that 5% increase really is. The median rent is around $3500 for a 1 bedroom apartment, that’s $175 a month the average person in the city could save. That’s significant.