That rent control has bad outcomes is uncontroversial. The question is, are they worse than forcing people out of their homes. Obviously for many people, "Peop

That rent control has bad outcomes is uncontroversial. The question is, are they worse than forcing people out of their homes. Obviously for many people, "People with money can't have something they want" is a better outcome than "people with less money will be required to leave their homes and go to less desirable places." You can, of course, disagree, but there is nothing strange or puzzling about this value judgement. You can say "that's how capitalism works, tough shit" but SF has found a power which is in this case mightier than the market: law. If it were the case that eliminating rent control would cause rents to settle somewhere reasonable and such an exodus would not happen, then that would be a compelling argument. But HN instead argues that those people deserve to be forced out of their homes. Obviously if eradication of rent control is landlords' condition for building new construction, they intend to raise rents further, otherwise they would not demand the ability to do so. You may think that's fine, but you can't really say it's unreasonable for the people who lose in that situation to oppose it.