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> In a setting where the supply of new housing is already limited by other factors – whether land-use policy or the capacity of existing infrastructure or shee

> In a setting where the supply of new housing is already limited by other factors – whether land-use policy or the capacity of existing infrastructure or sheer physical limits on construction – rent regulation will have little or no additional effect on housing supply. I find this sentence to be crucial. So 3/4 of the way into his speech it seems like he mentions perhaps the most important assumption he is making: he is assuming a situation where the supply and demand of housing is already largely fixed regardless of whether there is or there is no rent control. That's a bit funny, if that the case then it's almost by definition, the rent control is not going to have much effect in this case... Even if he is right about what he is pitching for under these assumptions, the discussion seems incomplete unless he also treats the situation where the supply of housing is flexible enough. What happens then? Does rent control has effect on supply in this case? Maybe the problem is actually too much regulation to begin with. Which then leads to very reduced flexibility in the market response. So he is not arguing about policies to reach global optimum, just policies to adjust for a local optimum under heavily regulated market assumption.

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Ericson2314 5y ago
Keep in reading, including the comments such as the author's in https://jwmason.org/slackwire/considerations-on-rent-control/#comment-13301 https://jwmason.org/slackwire/considerations-on-rent-control... : > I’m not entirely unsympathatic to your point of view. If we could do more to boost the supply of affordable housing, there would be less need for rent control, that is true. > But, first, less need is not no need. I don’t think it’s even physically possible to get a perfectly elastic housing supply at the local level, so when local demand rises some people are still going to face displacement from rising rents. And I think they deserve protection from that. Second, and more important, I am not at all sympathetic to the idea that we should remove protections that people very much need today, because they would need them less in a quite different world that we may reach someday. I'd say what you are talked about is exactly addressed. Sure, it would have been good to include in the article this audience, but that wasn't the audience of the original speech.
sudosysgen 5y ago
Actually, that is not his position. He includes economic constraints to construction, ie, the price of the land being too high.

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Ericson2314 5y ago

Keep in reading, including the comments such as the author's in https://jwmason.org/slackwire/considerations-on-rent-control/#comment-13301 https://jwmason.org/slackwire/considerations-on-rent-control... : > I’m not entirely unsympathatic to your point of view. If we could do more to boost the supply of affordable housing, there would be less need for rent control, that is true. > But, first, less need is not no need. I don’t think it’s even physically possible to get a perfectly elastic housing supply at the local level, so when local demand rises some people are still going to face displacement from rising rents. And I think they deserve protection from that. Second, and more important, I am not at all sympathetic to the idea that we should remove protections that people very much need today, because they would need them less in a quite different world that we may reach someday. I'd say what you are talked about is exactly addressed. Sure, it would have been good to include in the article this audience, but that wasn't the audience of the original speech.

sudosysgen 5y ago

Actually, that is not his position. He includes economic constraints to construction, ie, the price of the land being too high.