If rents are going up, you have gentrification. End of story. If rents are going up at ridiculously high rates, you have hyper-gentrification. San Francisco

If rents are going up, you have gentrification. End of story. If rents are going up at ridiculously high rates, you have hyper-gentrification. San Francisco can pick one or the other, but it can't opt out of the basic laws of supply and demand. ANY, and I mean ANY attempt at enforcing affordable rent for a particular income group will have unintended consequences that will either result in less properties being rented, or more rental properties instead being sold to the super-affluent as single family residences. Or, you can just accept reality and build new, denser developments which will, yes, probably price out the poorest. As a former construction worker who lived in Asheville, North Carolina (a Portland type city which has attracted tons of hipsters and trust-fund assholes who have driven up rents) I know what its like to have to move because my rent got jacked up. Instead of demanding the government allow me to afford a place to live, I accepted reality and moved the fuck on. I've since moved, worked my way up to making a decent salary, and one day (soon) I will move back and buy the house I got booted out of. The notion that one person has a "right" to rent a place at a given price is in direct conflict with the "right" of another person to rent that same room for a higher price. Rent control and "fair housing" policies benefit people like the majority of my family members. My family members, for the most part, are excellent at doing what they did the day before, the week before, the year before. If something begins to disrupt their routine, they complain about the disruption rather than changing their routine. They are poor, and this attitude is a big reason why. Rent control/fair housing policies primarily benefit people like my family.