I'm not entirely sure that rent control proponents believe it will lower rents. In my experience, most of them acknowledge that it will reduce supply and may in

I'm not entirely sure that rent control proponents believe it will lower rents. In my experience, most of them acknowledge that it will reduce supply and may increase prices in some areas. My experience with rent control proponents (being one myself despite the pure economics problems with it) is that most of them believe that there needs to be a "reserve" of properties that are available for lower income people...service workers, teachers, etc...to rent in or near the place where they work. The basic reason for that is, until recently, the number of people who want to live in a city like SF, NYC, etc. greatly outstrips the supply of housing. Basically, no matter how much housing you build, there is an endless supply of people willing to pay $X to live here, but $X is way over what is reasonable for a cashier, barista, bartender, teacher, etc. to afford. Now, there might be better ways to solve that problem, but one of the "easier" and more politically possible ones in cities like SF is rent control. The reality is that SF basically can't build enough housing to satiate demand in any realistic timeframe. So what do you do? Bitch about zoning laws and NIMBY's all day and make more and more workers move to Stockton and Tracy? Or do you actually try to do something that is possible to accomplish about that problem (recognizing it isn't perfect)? Anyway...rent control is interesting in many ways. Just felt like the number of people I've spoken to about it who believes it lowers rents generally rounds to basically zero.