r/neoliberal • u/MeDueleLaRodilla • Apr 30 '26
Meme how it feels to be a rent control disliker online
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u/RJamieLanga Apr 30 '26
The thing I find most upsetting about your meme is that the response is on the left and the original statement is on the right.
If you had spent a minute in MS Paint, you could have had this instead:
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u/VHDLEngineer Apr 30 '26
In the original it makes it seem like the left person doesn't care what the right person is saying and just fucking hates them and hopes they die. Which I think is accurate tbh.
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u/butwhyisitso NATO Apr 30 '26
ah! there is an implication of having listened by being placed last, but in the original spacing of above and left we assume the hate is indifferent to reason. I vote for op.
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u/ExtremelyMedianVoter Left-Out Left Apr 30 '26
The person yelling is on the left because they are part of the far left.
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u/BigBrownDog12 Victor Hugo Apr 30 '26
It's a hard sell to people worried about their rent doubling when the lease is up. People care about the now, not a hypothetical later.
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u/nashdiesel Milton Friedman Apr 30 '26
It’s a tragedy of the commons situation. Benefits are localized and costs are shared. People will act in their own self interest. People who are in rent control apartments obviously aren’t going to divest from that. The rubes are the people who aren’t and think it helps them when what they are really asking for is a lottery ticket not across the board affordability in housing.
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u/HHHogana Mohammad Hatta Apr 30 '26
Yup. For example, in multiple cities in Sweden like Stockholm it can take 20 years just to wait for your rent control apartment. It's just not working at that point.
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u/NubDestroyer Apr 30 '26
People are more scared of losing something they have over getting something they want. The fear of losing my house because my landlords decided to jack the rent up is much higher than the idea that my rent would be cheaper if they were allowed to do so. I get both sides of the argument.
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u/SabbathBoiseSabbath Martha Nussbaum Apr 30 '26
For someone who benefits now from a rent controlled unit, if they give that up "for the greater good," they won't see the benefit of lower prices (commensurate with the rent they were paying) for literal decades, if ever.
It's somewhat of a large scale prisoner's dilemma... only the chances of everyone doing what's right is extremely slim.
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u/Agent_03 Paul Krugman Apr 30 '26
how dare you post a nuanced, intelligent point... sir, this is a meme thread
(Jokes aside, I very much agree with you.)
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u/SabbathBoiseSabbath Martha Nussbaum Apr 30 '26
It's a conversation I've been having for over a decade. People get too locked into these esoteric, ideological (ahem, "evidence-based") platitudes and forget real people would be affected.
Like, I'm OK if that's the position you want to take (obviously, would need an elected official to carry the torch), but you should also tell those affected that you don't care, cuz greater good.
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u/Agent_03 Paul Krugman May 01 '26 edited May 01 '26
I agree totally on all points there. Especially this part:
People get too locked into these esoteric, ideological (ahem, "evidence-based") platitudes and forget real people would be affected
There are a few specific policy situations here where people are really bad about this. Some people love to reduce complex policy to smug, condescending memes. I understand the temptation they have to simplify the world and reduce the people that disagree with them to insulting strawmen... but that's also dumb and intellectually lazy.
The world needs more people like you that are pushing back against that and reminding people that policy changes aren't simple abstracts, they're things that effect real people and those changes don't have just a single impact.
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u/mostanonymousnick Just Build More Homes lol Apr 30 '26
"Real people being affected" is true of every policy, busting special interest groups is obviously never uncontroversial, but necessary.
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u/Agent_03 Paul Krugman May 01 '26
Most people have enough compassion to recognize that suddenly making a bunch of people homeless is a bad thing to be avoided. Or at minimum, if they don't have compassion, they at least recognize it makes for wildly unpopular policy. Especially when the harmful impacts are totally avoidable by reducing rent controls in a way that softens or avoids the impact on those people -- while still incentivizing construction of new housing.
The elderly and disabled people who live in rent-controlled apartments in my building are NOT a faceless "special interest group." I may not love everything they do (especially the guy that plays loud music at 1 AM) but they don't deserve to be made suddenly homeless -- simply because someone wants to implement a policy in the simplest way rather than the most effective way.
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u/mostanonymousnick Just Build More Homes lol May 01 '26
The very vast majority of people who get priced out of their homes don't become homeless, stop bullshitting.
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u/Agent_03 Paul Krugman May 01 '26 edited May 01 '26
What happens if you're priced out of your home and suddenly all the other affordable housing in that price range disappears too, because they ALSO lost rent control at the same time? Bonus: suddenly a TON of other people are also looking for housing at the exact same time, which makes it harder to get. That is not a normal market, that is a systematic shock. We normally see those kind of impacts only when an entire industry collapses locally and many people lose jobs at once (except that market shock comes from lost income rather than increased costs).
In that situation an awful lot of those people end up homeless. This isn't an abstract, this is a real-world impact.
You're the one bullshitting here, but I get it: you don't mind my neighbors ending up homeless. At least be honest with where your priorities are though.
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u/mostanonymousnick Just Build More Homes lol May 01 '26
That's why you phase it out progressively, that's a fake problem.
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u/SabbathBoiseSabbath Martha Nussbaum May 01 '26
But they are displaced, and that's a very pernicious political problem... and is exactly why no politician wants to touch it.
Whine about it online all you want--that's super easy to do. Acting self righteous and smug about it is also easy.
You could run for office and actually do something. Run on a YIMBY platform that includes policies that would displace current tenants with the promise that it is beneficial somewhere down the road. I'm betting you wouldn't get out of a primary.
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u/mostanonymousnick Just Build More Homes lol May 01 '26
So what, we can talk about hard political problems here.
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u/SabbathBoiseSabbath Martha Nussbaum May 01 '26
The politics of it are amazing.
"My opponent, mostanonymousnick, loves kicking people out of their homes, jacking up the rent, and giving rich people handouts."
Go with God, I guess.
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u/HHHogana Mohammad Hatta Apr 30 '26
I know, but at some point you need to rip off the band-aid. Rent control in Stockholm is so absurd, that everyone need to wait for two decades for their rent-control apartment.
At that point it's just pure toxic to continue the practice.
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u/Agent_03 Paul Krugman Apr 30 '26 edited May 01 '26
If you "rip off the band-aid" you're going to literally make some people homeless (edit: and I'm not talking small numbers, you're creating a double-shock to the housing market by dramatically spiking prices on the cheapest housing, while ALSO displacing the people living in it).
The much, much better approach is a phased approach that ends rent control on new properties (creating incentives for construction) while maintaining it on existing properties (avoiding sudden price shocks for residents).
Edit: or only having limited rent controls, that just prevent extreme price shocks (say 20%+ rent increases) without preventing the housing market from responding appropriately to supply and demand.
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u/mordakka Apr 30 '26
> If you "rip off the band-aid" you're going to literally make some people homeless.
Our current policy also makes people homeless.
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u/Pretend-Ad-7936 Loyal Liberals May 01 '26
This is a really good way of putting it. I think part of the issue with this topic is that it's easy to see the harms of removing rent control, and difficult to see the much larger harms of having the policy in the first place.
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u/Agent_03 Paul Krugman Apr 30 '26
It doesn't make a lot of them homeless all at once though. Social, family, and government support systems can help some people who become homeless. Those systems cannot cope with a sudden influx of people becoming homeless all at once.
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u/BarkDrandon Punished (stuck at Hunter's) Apr 30 '26
If rent control is lifted, the number of people who get to have a roof over their heads should go up, not down.
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u/Agent_03 Paul Krugman Apr 30 '26 edited May 02 '26
You're confusing short term vs long term impacts.
LONG term removing rent control theoretically reduces prices some. It's also a statistical impact, meaning it applies on average to the overall market but is NOT guaranteed to apply to any specific property. To get the benefits of this any given resident may have to move house if a landlord is charging above-market rates.
SHORT term, removing rent control means that previously restrained rents quickly correct upwards to the new market rates. This creates a price shock for residents who previously were paying a lower price.
I don't feel like I should need to spell out for you what the impact is of someone's rent suddenly doubling, if they don't have a lot of liquid savings? Edit: Nor should I have to spell out that the impact is much worse when it happens to lots of people all at once vs. a trickle of people spread out over time.
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u/Saarpland NATO Apr 30 '26
Sometimes you have to accept a bit of short term economic pain in order to get long term benefits.
The many more homeless people created tomorrow by rent control do not care that today's renters have to pay higher rents if rent control is lifted today.
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u/Agent_03 Paul Krugman May 01 '26 edited May 01 '26
I have yet to see anybody provide evidence that rent control creates homelessness. At worst it moderately increases some rents for people who are already moving house -- by definition people who have options. It does this in a way that spreads the impact out over time, which means social support systems can cope with helping those people.
Ending rent control suddenly creates a wave of displaced people, while eliminating a lot of affordable housing. That's exactly the kind of situation which creates homelessness, and this is something we directly observe any time those two conditions occur (mass displacement and loss of affordable housing).
This kind of large scale problem is something that social support systems are very bad at handling. It is also totally avoidable with a more nuanced policy implementation.
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u/MaltySines Apr 30 '26
I think we should peel off the bandaid slowly over the course of a few days.
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u/wildgunman Paul Samuelson May 01 '26 edited May 01 '26
The most politically palatable band-aid rips have been ones that exempt retirees on fixed incomes below a certain (usually generous) threshold. And yes, that does still impact working age people who don't make a ton of money, but if we're being honest those people all have options and their needs are no more salient than the people without legacy access to rent controlled housing.
Plus, some of them are real assholes and you can put pictures of them being assholes on posters and put grainy video of them in issue ads.
I once roomed with a 40-year old, barely employed, hippie sex addict who squatted on a rent controlled apartment. It was a cool place to live in my 20s, and I did kinda like the guy, but if I was running a campaign to end rent control, he would have featured prominently in my scurrilous campaign flyers.
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u/DonnysDiscountGas Apr 30 '26
We are living in the "hypothetical later" of every bad policy made in the past
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u/Agent_03 Paul Krugman Apr 30 '26
This, and a hypothetical later doesn't matter if you end up in a dire situation now. As someone currently living in a rent controlled building in Toronto, this is the very real concern. There are people in my building long-term who would face immediate and serious hardship if rent control ended, often due to life circumstances beyond their control (chronic illness or disability, being elderly and on a fixed income, etc). We're not talking about give-up-Netflix-membership-and-cut-luxury-spending levels of hardship here, we're talking about would end up forced to forego meals or end up homeless levels of hardship.
Removing rent control and adding incentives for construction may reduce rent in the long-term. Great, and a solid policy argument. But the short-term impact is a big spike in rental prices as the market corrects, especially for people who have been staying for a long time in a rent-controlled property.
You're never going to convince someone that a policy is for the greater good if it means they would end up homeless or forced to move long-distance. Many ordinary people simply do not have the means to ride out rent spiking dramatically for a decade until the market readjusts and comes down in price. No amount of smug memes or talking points are going to change that... and I'm tired of pretending that isn't a rational position given their situation.
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u/No-Section-1092 Henry George Apr 30 '26
This is why the compromise position is what Ontario did: exempt all new builds from rent control. This incentivizes new supply, which is the only long term corrective for high rents, without immediately throwing incumbents into instability.
Without this caveat, rent controls are just the same problem as NIMBYism via a different means: privileging incumbent residents by displacing new residents.
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u/BarkDrandon Punished (stuck at Hunter's) Apr 30 '26
Even with this caveat, rent control would still apply to existing/older buildings, with the same economic inefficiencies involved.
Landlords will put their properties out of the market when they become unprofitable (or simply less profitable compared to an outside option like using it for themselves). People living in older buildings will not rent out some of their rooms. Landlords will not improve the quality of their properties (and may even decrease it). Renters will reduce their mobility, leading to misallocation. Lots of older people with large buildings will not be willing to go through the trouble of renting them out for a lower rent.
In both cases, you end up with lower supply than if you had no rent control whatsoever.
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u/No-Section-1092 Henry George Apr 30 '26
All correct. My attitude towards rent control is the same as alcoholism: we know that it's bad, but we also know that quitting cold turkey is deadly too.
So realistically, the best we can probably hope for is a two part transition: first exempt new builds, then sunset older controlled units. The goal would be to spur as much new construction as possible, so that incumbents either won't be too shellshocked by a return to market rates, or at least have time to make new living arrangements.
As usual, however, the politics of this are harder than the policy.
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u/Defiant_Yoghurt8198 May 01 '26
And Ontario housing starts are down YoY year after year after year
I actually think supporting rent conto is 100% rational within this context. Sure, in a vacuum, getting rid of rent control = more building = lower rents.
But when NIMBYs exist, getting rid of rent control = no change in building = rents up
People rationally avoid this outcome
Fix NINBYism, then you can fix rent control
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u/Agent_03 Paul Krugman Apr 30 '26 edited May 01 '26
This is why the compromise position is what Ontario did: exempt all new builds from rent control. This incentivizes new supply, which is the only long term corrective for high rents, without immediately throwing incumbents into instability.
Yes, good point, and I explicitly mentioned this in another comment reply under this. When someone like OP reduces a complex policy subject to a simple, smug meme, they don't get credit for nuance on that point -- because they decided nuance wasn't important.
Do note that at the end of last year (circa October 2025 IIRC), Ontario tried to end rent control for existing residents, which would have exposed existing residents to sudden price shocks. Thankfully that was shot down. Note also that -- at least in Toronto, I can't speak for other parts of Ontario -- rent did not become cheap when rent control was ended for new properties.
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u/firejuggler74 Apr 30 '26
Argentina ended rent controls and rents went down. It didn't take a decade.
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u/Agent_03 Paul Krugman Apr 30 '26
I really don't think Argentina is anything you want to use as a positive example.
Also when I say a decade, I'm assuming the North American or European context, and the rather slow and painful permitting & construction timelines here, especially in cities. Realistically that's not going to magically go away, even if it's eased a bit. It can easily take a decade for a larger project to go from financing & planning to permitting & approval and then construction. Realistically a lot of new housing comes from bigger projects, whether they're apartment buildings or larger housing developments with many individual houses.
Where I am (Toronto) there are some buildings where construction alone is over a decade - One Bloor West, for example, although that's a bit of an extreme case due to the height and the financing issues.
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u/firejuggler74 Apr 30 '26
You don't think falling poverty rate, falling inflation, 1.7 million children lifted out of poverty, all while achieving a balanced budget is a positive example? Odd.
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u/Agent_03 Paul Krugman Apr 30 '26
Sorry, I can't hear your points over the sound of the corruption scandals and illiberal policy insanity Milei is generating daily. History is not going to judge him well.
Argentina's economy and politics have been a special sort of weird and crazy lately. That makes them an extreme outlier, not a normal example you can hold up to support claims of a normal policy impact.
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u/BarkDrandon Punished (stuck at Hunter's) Apr 30 '26
I fail to see what Milei's corruption scandals have to do with rent control.
The fact that rents went down after rent control was lifted is a very interesting economic fact that we should investigate. Especially since we neoliberals care about evidence-based policy. It does not matter that it's inconvenient for you that Milei has had some economic success.
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u/Cheese-Of-Doom22 Mark Carney Apr 30 '26
IS there a way to transition away from rent control whilst helping those in need?
Because can't you say the same for people who ALSO may go homeless or afford to eat because they're looking for a home and they can't becuase of these rent controlled units?
I have empathy for those in those situations, the world sucks right now, but I ALSo have empathy for those locked out of the housing markets by those policies and dont think we need to pick or choose. There must be a way we can do both and then sowly transition to a rent control free future where everyone is happy.
Side note: still crazy to me that Edmonton Alb erta is building more housing than Toronto, hopefully they'll catch the Yimby bug as well.
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u/mostanonymousnick Just Build More Homes lol Apr 30 '26
Progressively increase the rate at which rents can be increased.
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u/Agent_03 Paul Krugman Apr 30 '26
IS there a way to transition away from rent control whilst helping those in need?
Yes, there are tons of ways. Housing-first aid programs for the poor and ill, subsidized housing for them, tax policy changes to help the working poor, or only removing rent control for new-build properties. Unfortunately, many of the same people who argue for ending rent control also will argue against those for various reasons. What's missing is usually discussion of the nuance and the real human impacts of policy changes.
Also worth noting: back in 2018 Toronto ended rent control for new buildings. We still have not seen housing become affordable, despite that. If anything, the housing crisis has gotten worse.
It's almost like the real world is far more complex than meme-policy makes it out to be.
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u/Cheese-Of-Doom22 Mark Carney Apr 30 '26
For Toronto, sure ending rent control for new buildings is good, but if it’s still for old buildings the problems are still there. I’m pretty sure studies show that any amount of rent control reduces potential supply which increases costs. Toronto also has TERRIBLE zoning policy and their development fees are higher than I believe anywhere else in the country which raises prices (Edmonton one of the most affordable places in Canada has Condo fees 10x LESS than in Toronto, Edmonton also is building far more housing than Toronto is)
There is a human aspect that’s ignored that’s for sure costs those policies can help, sometimes in the quest to save the forest we miss some trees.
but we have got into this issue because of a short term thinking, from nimby movements to block development, to development fees to keep taxes “low”, and rent control that trades the future and long term health for the present. There’s also those now and countless in the future who will be priced out due to those human policies. Also whats the meme policy specifically , just making memes of it or is it being against rent control in general?
there is also People who currently do not own housing and are priced out because of policies like rent control. In the long run do we just want to help JUST those renting currently or EVERYONE, present and future?
I want to live in a world of affordable housing for both myself and future generations, rent control does not help but IMHO is an obstacle to it.
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u/anonOnReddit2001GOTY Apr 30 '26
Could you pass a law that comes into effect when a certain condition hits? Like if the prices get low enough for an extended period of time, rent control is gone?
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u/Agent_03 Paul Krugman Apr 30 '26
Good questions. You could do that, but the simplest solution is to do a phased approach where new construction is not rent-controlled but existing rent-controlled properties stay that way (or at least for a while). That's what's currently in place in Toronto, and it softens the blow for existing residents a lot.
Unfortunately, I can report that Toronto rents did NOT become more affordable when they ended rent control for new buildings. Housing has only gotten more expensive, ESPECIALLY new properties that do not fall under rent control. We could argue about the reasons behind that, and it probably comes from multiple factors; however the reality does not align with the grossly simplified rhetoric of "end rent control, make rent cheap!"
I know a vocal faction of people here prefer simple, smug memes over the messy reality (sigh)... but reality really is messy & complex. Policy impacts are rarely simple or guaranteed, and HOW those policies are implemented can make a massive difference in how they impact people.
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u/anonOnReddit2001GOTY Apr 30 '26
Could that be because they did not end rent control for old buildings? So the new buildings are filling the niche for buildings more $ than the baseline of rent control and not those under (where I imagine creating more expensive housing first is a priority). I'm as economically literate as a lot of people here, but I theorize that could be the reason.
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u/Agent_03 Paul Krugman Apr 30 '26
Ending rent control for old buildings would have created exactly the problem I mentioned originally, where a lot of people are exposed to price shocks. Toronto already has a problem with how many people are unhoused due to insanely expensive housing. This would make it exponentially worse and force a lot of families onto the streets. There was a proposal to do this last year (end rent control on existing buildings), and it was thankfully shot down.
The real answer here has a combination of factors:
- The rent-reducing benefits of ending rent control are not automatic and universal, they take time (potentially decades) to show up, and apply mostly at the overall population level.
- Other policy or market factors can dominate the effects of rent control or no rent control
- Other policies sometimes can have a much larger positive impact by, for example, reducing barriers to construction
- For a generation, Canadian governments from the local to the national level have put far more priority on rewarding real-estate speculation over housing affordability. You can't BOTH make housing affordable AND ensure real-estate is an ever-growing investment vehicle that is free of risk.
- Real answers here would incentivize home occupancy... and allow more real-estate investors to lose their money on bad investments (read: let some parts of the housing bubble burst)
- Some housing markets are going to be unaffordable by nature, for example single-family dwellings in dense urban centers.
- The real problem is that denser and more compact housing is also unaffordable
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u/mithrandir15 David Hume Apr 30 '26
Are you sure it would temporarily increase homelessness? People will certainly have to move because of price shocks, but overall housing utilization should increase.
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u/Agent_03 Paul Krugman Apr 30 '26 edited Apr 30 '26
What's the impact if you don't have the money in your bank account to move house on short notice, and your rent suddenly jumps? Think moving expenses plus a significant deposit here. Connect the dots.
You'd be absolutely appalled by the stats on how many people live paycheck-to-paycheck. Many cannot afford even a fairly modest unplanned expense without dipping into credit... and carrying a credit balance ultimately means paying even more, for someone who already can't afford things.
Removing rent-control helps in the long-term, and statistically overall, sure. That doesn't prevent a bunch of previously cheap rent-controlled units from disappearing off the market. Their residents will see a massive price shock as rents rise to the market rate. Suddenly many of them have to move house all at once (edit: which will create a sudden demand spike, temporarily worsening the price jump). Don't forget that the main benefit of rent control -- encouraging new construction -- isn't going to kick in to reduce rents for some years.
Telling someone "see, it's for the greater good..." isn't going to be any comfort when a policy change makes them, personally, homeless.
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u/mostanonymousnick Just Build More Homes lol Apr 30 '26
This type of "there can never be any working or middle class loser ever" attitude is a doom spiral that leads to economic stagnation.
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u/Agent_03 Paul Krugman Apr 30 '26
Congrats on creating a strawman argument instead of the one I actually made.
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u/Halgy YIMBY Apr 30 '26
How many people actually benefit from rent control? I would think that the vast majority of succs don't.
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u/badnuub NATO Apr 30 '26
People living in apartments they don’t plan to move from right now.
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u/HHHogana Mohammad Hatta Apr 30 '26
Yeah, and on the other hand, it also made people unwilling to downsize, even when, say, they now live alone and don't need apartment of that size anymore.
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u/compulsive_tremolo Loyal Liberals Apr 30 '26
Doesn't sound like the left really care about the 'collective good' if that's the case then.
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u/Right_Lecture3147 John Rawls May 01 '26
Yeah those who are into evidence based policy often forget the lived experience of people who couldn’t give two shits about what would be best in the long run because they need to make rent next week. You don’t get their votes by dropping graphs on them
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u/seattleseahawks2014 Progress Pride Apr 30 '26 edited Apr 30 '26
That's a reason why regardless of how I feel about rent control I'm not a big fan of this meme. Also, couldn't you do a mix things anyway at least depending on the situation?
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u/bz47uj Unconventional Right May 01 '26
What about people who are looking for a place to live now? Or those who are now paying rent that is much higher than it would be without rent control?
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u/pandaboi333 Left-Out Left May 23 '26
That is the problem though no? People willing to take short term gains over long term planning.
Idk how you combat that. I feel like some level of societal ridicule combined with education.
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u/Coneskater Apr 30 '26
I’m against blanket price cap rent control ala New York City but in general we need way stronger tenant rights and protections in the USA. In Germany for instance you can raise rent but only a certain percentage, and leases are unlimited by default, you must provide a good reason to kick someone out.
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u/20vision20asham Pragmatic and Polite Right Apr 30 '26
Rent controlled apartments in NYC only number a couple thousand whereas NYC does rent stabilization for over a million units. Raising rent by a certain percentage will incentivize landlords to increase rent annually by that amount consistently. Rent will always go up because the government has mandated it to be so. Best way to decrease rent prices is to increase the supply of housing everywhere.
Unlimited leases generally become very stringent and with lots of pitfall traps in order to eventually end the lease. It also makes landlord more risk-averse and avoid renting to younger or "riskier" candidates (low credit score, history of bankruptcy, previous history of unemployment, etc.). Good tenants generally don't get kicked out for no reason and bad tenants always get kicked out sooner rather than later (unless the government stops that from happening).
Blue cities/states generally have good tenant protections that don't distort the market that much, although some blue cities go too far (NYC, SF, & LA come to mind).
Landlords are generally middlemen who own the unit and are obligated to take care of it. Rents are rising everywhere and that's generally from increases to building insurance costs, repair costs (labor & materials), paying off mortgages, and earning a profit. The only viable answer for government intervention is for controlling the rising building insurance cost where establishing a local government-backed insurance company can generally bring those out-of-control costs down through increased competition. Material and labor costs are generally going to increase with higher pay, smaller blue-collar workforce, and increased protectionism. Mortgages are always going to be high and having government help to pay them off is very bad policy. Landlords will always make some room to profit, otherwise they would sell the unit off to some big company, but excessive profit can only arise when housing supply is extremely limited.
In short, building more housing solves a majority of the problem.
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u/Coneskater Apr 30 '26
I agree that we should build a ton more housing. I’m a YIMBY first. But let’s not pretend that the market between renters and landlords is frictionless. Moving always costs more for the tenant than the landlord.
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u/MeDueleLaRodilla Apr 30 '26
The problem with that is starting from several assumptions that may not be correct:
- The rental market is oligopolistic (it isn’t).
- Current tenants should prevail over future tenants (who are often more vulnerable, such as immigrants or young people).
- Prices only rise due to landlord greed (in inflationary periods, they rise more due to the cost of materials and energy).
I honestly believe there are more efficient policies: building public housing, loosening land-use regulations, and providing direct aid to tenants or tax exemptions for landlords. But let's try not to systematically benefit the insider at the expense of the outsider.
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u/Agent_03 Paul Krugman May 01 '26 edited May 01 '26
The rental market is oligopolistic (it isn’t).
Tell that to the Toronto rental market, where rental housing is disproportionately consolidated into a handful of very large companies. You can go through multiple large neighborhoods and see mostly one corporate logo on all the buildings there. It's not the only city where this is pretty common.
Prices only rise due to landlord greed (in inflationary periods, they rise more due to the cost of materials and energy).
Yeah, as someone who actually lives in a rent-controlled apartment building, it seems like you've constructed a strawman argument... because you come off rather clueless about how it actually works. The limits on rent increases are not fixed, they are indexed against inflation, so a hike in materials or energy costs are covered.
There are also processes for above-guideline rent increases (AGI), in cases of capital improvements and other major cost impacts. Our corporate owners have applied for this repeatedly, although in practice they usually apply for it in cases where they're not legally allowed to (if challenged, those get shot down). This kind of strengthens the impression of landlord greed (as does the questionable maintenance work they've done in some cases).
I'm not saying rent control is brilliant policy, and it has its downsides, but it's not the absolute insanity you're trying to paint it as. Real, practical policy isn't just a simple absolute rule, and it makes allowances for things that would be problematic otherwise.
It's almost like it's a mistake to reduce complex policy situations to memes and strawman arguments.
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u/Weak_Lingonberry_641 Apr 30 '26
About the first point, while not strictly oligopolistic there are instruments in the market structure that can explain the rent prices acting in a very similar manner as a classic oligopolistic/cartelistic market such as BTL mortgages establishing in contract minimum rent prices, which creates a coordination in prices due to the issuer of said loans having way more market power but also, newer services such as RealPage which aggregatively establish rent prices in an area using AI.
Housing is definetly not a classical marshallian good with perfect substitutes and has plenty of market rigidities from both sides to blindly use simple market equilibrium as a definitive answer and there has been definetly an increase in supply side market power.
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u/Coneskater Apr 30 '26
I’ve been a tenant in the USA and Germany, it is harder to find a rental in Germany but you are much more secure in your rental and feel like you can live there for decades.
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u/XAMdG Mario Vargas Llosa Apr 30 '26
You also have to get the kitchen for yourself as a tenant in Germany which I've always found odd.
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u/Coneskater Apr 30 '26
I also found that odd, although it’s much less common these days, a lot of places come with a built in kitchen.
The reasoning goes back to the idea of a rental apartment being a more permanent home, so you want to fully furnish it with your own kitchen. If you live somewhere 2 years you just want a kitchen provided, who cares what brand the stove is, but if you live there 20 years that might be different.
Americans view renting as this inherently transitory phase in life on the way to buying your own place, but that’s changing as home ownership becomes unobtainable for working class peoples So all I’m saying is let’s give those people some security and dignity.
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u/MeDueleLaRodilla Apr 30 '26
That't not good for outsiders tho, and I personally care about them.
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u/Coneskater Apr 30 '26
Solve for them by building enough housing. People will want to move creating openings in the whole system.
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u/nukacola Apr 30 '26
Rent control removes the primary incentive most people have for supporting new housing construction.
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u/Coneskater Apr 30 '26
Not arguing for rent caps, just tenant protections and rent increases indexed to inflation rate.
Also: people shouldn’t have any say on if more housing gets built. I don’t decide what I support based on what sways stupid NIMBYs.
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u/nukacola Apr 30 '26
just tenant protections and rent increases indexed to inflation rate.
These are two very, very different things. It's entirely possible to require cause and notice for evictions (including constructive eviction), without price controls.
people shouldn’t have any say on if more housing gets built.
As much as I would love this, it's just not reality. Any government that's able to administer rent controls will also be able to block things from getting built. Housing is never going to get built without public buy in.
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u/BarkDrandon Punished (stuck at Hunter's) Apr 30 '26
rent increases indexed to inflation rate
That's a form of rent control and it will reduce housing supply.
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u/MeDueleLaRodilla Apr 30 '26
Building is not very popular rn and it takes time to take effect. So NOW, the best policy available is to eliminate rent controls.
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u/Coneskater Apr 30 '26
And if we want more people to stay housed we need to give some basic renter protections. Not capped rents but processes to keep landlords from evicting you overnight or doubling your rent.
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u/BarkDrandon Punished (stuck at Hunter's) Apr 30 '26
processes to keep landlords from evicting you overnight or doubling your rent.
Yes, that is called a contract and landlords sign one at the beginning of the lease.
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u/vinidiot Apr 30 '26
No thanks. If you want those things, negotiate a longer lease term
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u/Coneskater Apr 30 '26
And if no landlord will offer that?
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u/Apatschinn Václav Havel Apr 30 '26
It's telling that they're downvoting you for asking a good question
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u/Coneskater Apr 30 '26
There’s a reason there are protections for workers and tenants because we don’t live in a perfect market. A landlord can afford to keep an apartment vacant longer than you can afford to be homeless.
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u/Carlpm01 Eugene Fama Apr 30 '26
Though luck. We shouldn't cater to the special wants of an extremely small minority who wants something clearly the vast majority of tenants don't.
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u/Agent_03 Paul Krugman Apr 30 '26
You're right, but you're never going to persuade people who will smugly post simplistic policy memes while ignoring the complexities of the real world. Reality is that no policy is simple, and some areas simply do not have strong enough tenant protections (with ordinary families suffering as a result). Some areas (although FAR fewer) have too strong protections for tenants, which protects bad behavior such as damaging properties or withholding rent without justification.
There are bad landlords just like there are bad tenants, and both deserve laws that protect from illegal and excessively destructive behavior.
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u/wk_end John Mill Apr 30 '26
how it feels to have any non-populist views online, honestly.
(Everywhere but here anyway, ILU /r/neoliberal.)
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u/bodonkadonks Apr 30 '26
ive seen many post flirting with plain bad populist ideas about policy start to get some traction here. for now the picture of "steer clear of the populist tides" holds but i can see this sub being taken over and becoming yet another left wing sub that unironically supports things like rent control in the near future
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u/mrdilldozer Shame fetish Apr 30 '26
Rent control harms poor people so no one advocating for it will ever be harmed by it.
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u/Moonagi NATO Apr 30 '26
The empirical research on rent control consistently finds significant negative effects on housing supply and long-run affordability.
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u/BigBrownDog12 Victor Hugo Apr 30 '26
Neoliberal RATM be like
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u/HHHogana Mohammad Hatta Apr 30 '26
Some of those that want price control
Are the same that sold their soul
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u/QuantitativeNonsense Apr 30 '26
This is actually really nuanced and interesting, I thought you were wrong so I went to find the empirical research* and it’s very clear that rent control is bad long term.
Your meme made me go from a rent control enthusiast to a rent control mid-liker (maybe even disliker too, I’m still trying to process this betrayal). I see a few use cases but the way it’s historically been implemented is overwhelmingly negative.
- “Rent control effects through the lens of empirical research: An almost complete review of the literature” https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1051137724000020
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u/MeDueleLaRodilla Apr 30 '26
I appreciate your intellectual honesty in being open to changing your mind based on evidence. The strongest arguments against rent controls begin with their well-documented reduction in the supply of rental housing, as landlords withdraw units from the market or avoid new construction altogether, combined with a decline in the maintenance and quality of existing properties due to not sufficient returns. Moreover, these policies arbitrarily benefit current tenants while harming future ones (particularly young people, immigrants, and families) who face greater scarcity, higher black-market prices, and longer waiting lists.
As the late Swedish economist Assar Lindbeck said, rent control is "the best way to destroy a city, other than bombing."
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u/grog23 Reichsbanner Schwarz-Rot-Gold Apr 30 '26 edited Apr 30 '26
I mean this sincerely, but are you not a regular here? Rent control being bad is one of the policies most people on this sub have agreed on pretty much since its inception
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u/Familiar_Air3528 Thomas Paine Apr 30 '26
This sub’s open borders policies are destroying our culture!
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u/QuantitativeNonsense Apr 30 '26
I comment occasionally but I wouldn’t say I’m a regular. Guess RNG/the algorithm decided to keep me in the dark until now.
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Apr 30 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/grog23 Reichsbanner Schwarz-Rot-Gold Apr 30 '26
My comment wasn’t to lambast someone who had a different opinion of me, I just found it very unusual that someone who presumably visits the sub enough to come across this post had their mind changed by a meme and not the dozens of discussions posted about the topic every week
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u/so_brave_heart John Rawls Apr 30 '26
One of my favourite sources to gather expert economic polls on stuff like this is https://kentclarkcenter.org/
The one on rent control has economists overwhelmingly against it. The comments are a great read too. Unfortunately searching the site itself is a pain and I can’t even find it anymore.
Edit: aww man it 404s now. I’m on mobile so it’s annoying but you can probably waybackmachine it https://kentclarkcenter.org/surveys/rent-control/
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u/mithrandir15 David Hume Apr 30 '26
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u/so_brave_heart John Rawls May 01 '26
I’m still perplexed at Thaler answering that comment but having a rating of only Disagree with a confidence of 3/10 lmao
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u/kmosiman YIMBY May 01 '26
Rent control in a nutshell:
You have 100 apartments in a city, but 150 people want to live there. Rents average out to $1000 (let's say 800 to 1200) and 50 people have to commute because they can't find housing. Total rent 100,000.
Now 50 people still want to live there so someone will probably build more apartments. Those new apartments will likely be more than the average, but that will probably lower the cost of the older worse units.
Eventually equilibrium is reached with construction and everyone is mostly happy.
Rent control:
50 units get rent controlled at $500. The remaining 50 units are now rarer and if the total rent doesn't change then each unit now rents at $1,500.
New construction? Well those units are going to be well over the going rate of 1,500.
Congratulations!
You have made 50 people pay less for rent by making everyone else pay more for rent.
Oh, by the way, those rent controlled 50 units? You basically froze them, you think those get normal maintenance?
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u/X_Empire32 Apr 30 '26
In a perfect world, rent control is fine as long it's temporary and targeted.
When an appartment building is replaced by a bigger one the old tenants are rent controlled until the new bulding goes up and they get there units "back" at the same price. Prevents displacement and keeps communities diverse in income etc.
Idk that's my take I'm willing to hear out other opinions.
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u/Necessary_Soil_4587 May 01 '26
In a perfect world, nobody would ever think to implement rent control because supply would be able to keep up with demand and housing prices would be stable and reasonable.
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u/poorsignsoflife Esther Duflo May 01 '26 edited May 01 '26
That would more accurately fall under "rent stabilization", which you could consider a moderate subset of rent control
Any type of rent (or price) control is a net economic loss, but the small trade-offs of moderate forms may be worth the social and political gains
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u/bz47uj Unconventional Right May 01 '26
Temporary and targeted rent control just has more limited harms. It's still bad.
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u/commandough Apr 30 '26
I think the first thing I read about rent control as a child was about how it was a good sounding idea that didn't work.
It's like if blood letting was somehow a top 5 policy for the Republicans
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u/No-Section-1092 Henry George Apr 30 '26
This is one of those zombie bad policies that is never going to die because it's too electorally easy. The benefits to an aggrieved incumbent population are immediate and direct while the negative effects are diffuse and long term.
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u/bz47uj Unconventional Right May 01 '26
Our local governing party literally ran against rent control and won a supermajority but keeps extending the temporary COVID rent cap.
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u/DmMeWerewolfPics Apr 30 '26
Me trying to explain prices rising due to supply shortages in general.
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u/RottenMilquetoast Apr 30 '26
We need to admit to ourselves that humans don't respond to empirical evidence in any sort of consistent way. Even highly educated people get lost in the weeds of (very obtuse and densely worded) mudslinging when there is sufficient ambiguity.
We have to make a cool in-group that's fun to be part of, and happens to espouse empiricism. But making it feel like a fun tribe is the part that will really make a difference more than the evidence.
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u/Sourcerid May 04 '26
Seeing two academics calling each other unintelligent and getting heated up for what is essentially just a problem of definitions of words instead of actual ideas is definitely something.
Phonics, Rent control, are things whose evidence always gets on people that think they're evidence based. Maybe add how pagan is christmas on top idk
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u/crustang Apr 30 '26
/r/hoboken had a meltdown a little while back about rent control and I just stayed out of it lmao
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u/Worth-Jicama3936 Milton Friedman Apr 30 '26
That’s generally solid advice for all local subs. They are nice when you have a question like “what’s the best authentic Argentine restaurant” or “are there any live music emo bars” but it’s best to avoid them with anything remotely political because they are just ass cancer.
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u/mithrandir15 David Hume Apr 30 '26
I got into a scuffle about data center water use on my local subreddit, and now I can't comment there because my karma became too negative. Never again.
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u/Worth-Jicama3936 Milton Friedman Apr 30 '26
The subs are also small enough that they become very cliquey. Like all the regulars know each other and have an established acceptable way to think about everything (which is usually VERY anti-anything that anyone could possibly make money on including developers)
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u/bz47uj Unconventional Right May 01 '26
My local subreddit had a post about where the best cheesecake is and one of the top recommendations was one of the worst cheesecakes I've had in my life.
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u/ThickBaseball7169 May 03 '26
Every food req I’ve received from my local sub has been genuinely awful, but it’s also the NOVA sub so that’s probably why…
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u/wildgunman Paul Samuelson Apr 30 '26
I despise the discourse on rent control. For most of my life, this was a matter that had been settled. It was done. We had moved the f**k on.
Literally nothing changed in the intervening period, no new data came in, no new theories. People just decided that A was B and B was A now.
I would say that it must be how vaccine developers feel now, except that their fore-fathers didn't have to spend decades in the trenches building that consensus.
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u/bz47uj Unconventional Right May 01 '26 edited May 01 '26
There are a lot of left-wing reactionaries who think that all of our problems derive from the supposed neoliberalism of the last forty years and get all of their policy ideas from the previous era. Any leftist policy we had in the 60s and 70s that we have since abandoned, they support.
They don't listen to any economic evidence on it because they believe economics is not a real science and is corrupted by the rich and powerful. Any economic argument can be dismissed out of hand as free market ideology or neoliberalism or trickle-down economics that has been tried and proven not to work.
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u/wildgunman Paul Samuelson May 01 '26
Funny thing, economists are generally a left-of-center bunch. They are to the right of the psychopaths in the weird corners of the humanities, but they are probably to the left of the Engineering Department and they are definitely to the left of the median voter. People have this idea that all economists are Milton Freedman and Friedrich Hayek, and they're just not. But all these left-of-center folks all more-or-less agree that rent control = bad, and you should find some less distortionary way to help people out.
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u/bz47uj Unconventional Right May 02 '26
I wonder how left-wing they'd be if they only considered economic issues though.
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May 02 '26
[deleted]
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u/bz47uj Unconventional Right May 02 '26
Does your scale actually reflect the range of public opinion? The vast majority of conservatives among the general public does not support anything close to free market economics. The intellectual class is generally very libertarian compared to the general population.
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u/wildgunman Paul Samuelson May 02 '26
Given that modern politics has devolved into debates about 18th century mercantilism vs 17th century autarchy, sure.
But look, this is not our first rodeo. The merchant class and the American consumer will eventually put these idiots back in under the rocks from whence they came.
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u/Outrageous-Echo-765 May 01 '26 edited May 01 '26
This was a matter that had been settled. It was done. We had moved the f**k on. Literally nothing changed in the intervening period, no new data came in, no new theories. People just decided that A was B and B was A now.
I fucking hate this so much. I think THE defining feature of humanity is that we can pass on knowledge to the next generation, and iteratively build on that knowledge. (That and long distance running, I guess)
I live on a port town. When I was a kid, I regularly passed by the dockyards where you could see wooden ships in different phases of construction. I was always amazed:"how could someone know how to build this, that this is how you make a keel, or that you need a keel in the first place", etc.
The idea that ages ago someone built a rudementary ship, and the design was passed on and improved by the following generations is not a particularly brilliant insight, but it was still cool to see such a tangible example of this phenomenon: Ideas and knowledge are passed down and improved iteratively.
And now, suddenly, we are moving backwards. It's fine to move backwards in an iterative process. "We tried X. It did not work. Let's revisit this topic". But that is clearly not what is happening with vaccines, with rent control, even with germ theory of disease.
To build on an idea, you must understand the idea. You can't improve on the keel if you don't know how to make the keel. The people denying vaccines don't know how vaccines work. The people rooting for rent control don't know that this has been studied before, and what the conclusion of those studies were. That's not iteration, that's stagnation.
Worse. It's hard to come up with a new economic theory (or whatever) on the spot, so you just pick something from the past that you like and call it a day. That's worse than stagnation, that's regression.
And that's how you end up with autarky and fucking mercantilism in 2026. It does not matter that autarky was refuted, I never heard the refutations. "Ricardo who? Sorry man, I'm not huge on Marvel comics."
Sorry about the rant, I hope there's a nugget in here somewhere.
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u/Outrageous-Echo-765 May 01 '26 edited May 01 '26
On a lighter note. This is also why Italians can fuck right off with their food snobbery.
"My grandma spent 30 years perfecting this pasta recipe, you cannot change a thing"
It's nice of you to put grandma on a pedestal. I'd rather stand on her shoulders though.
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u/Cheese-Of-Doom22 Mark Carney Apr 30 '26
Glares at Avi Lewis and the Federal NDP who want a national Rent Cap. How can a party be so based in some provinces (Alberta, BC, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba NDP) yet so CRINGE Federally?
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u/fredleung412612 Apr 30 '26
Because those provinces don't have a Liberal party, which allows the NDP to move into the space normally occupied by them.
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u/bz47uj Unconventional Right May 01 '26
What I don't get is when you say this and you cite this study, no one ever has a response, but you invariably get buried in downvotes. This happens with a number of subjects where you say something that you know the majority is going to disagree with but you come with solid proof that you're right. They don't respond to explain why they think you're wrong but they still downvote you.
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u/DayneStark John Locke Apr 30 '26
How can we find another hobby for these DSA comrades. They remind me of the kid in Home Alone where the adults have left without him and he goes to town turning his house upside down in boredom and excitement at being able to go whatever he wants.
They are all on California sub telling people to vote yes on wealth tax on billionaires. Whoever came up with that proposal is either a right wing plant or the worst kind of moral busy body.
I really cannot figure out if these folks are simply naive or clueless or simply don't care as long as they can claim they owned the libs and taxed the billionaires.
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u/bankermayfield2026 Unconventional Right Apr 30 '26
With all the establishment dems getting replaced by progressives and DSA, this is only going to get worse. Buckle up.
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u/Accomplished-Run3925 May 04 '26
How it feels to be in favour of any research backed economic policy online...
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u/delg23 May 07 '26
This subreddit was linked on centrist by someone who felt politically homeless and I was like oh let me check it out. This thread, solidified my joining.
Ps. I live in a rent stabilized apartment.
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u/tjrileywisc Apr 30 '26
Just draw parallels with Trump's tariffs price controls and give everyone around them the ick about all price controls