Limiting rent increases to max 8% (what this bill encodes) is only going to affect maybe 1-3% of lease agreements annually. This isn't about vast controls of housing stock, it about limiting 20% rent spikes people experience.
In a vacuum, yes. Just as much as on paper 0.1+0.2=0.3 but in most floating point implementations it doesn’t.
In application Toronto has seen the opposite effect to what you describe. We hear this argument over and over as we just had our rent control stripped, but it’s counter to the experience.
A consensus of opinion is irrelevant. And among those articles is hardly a consensus. One wants regulations limited to an extent, another wants vouchers instead of rent controls.
Those (The few of those I could actually read, thanks paywalls!) all focused on the effects on owners bringing rental units out of the market and don't really show that there was an overall decrease in the number of housing units available. The economist article for example doesn't have any real info on the effect of rent control just the fairly standard arguments about it affecting the willingness of land owners to build.
this doesn't impact new buildings (only buildings older than 15 years old), its impact on housing creating is miniscule compared with the regulatory barriers of zoning and cost barriers of impact fees and construction costs.
The value of a new building (for finance purposes, IE getting a loan for construction) is based on the DFCF over the next 15 years, this is an industry standard. This rent control implementation doesn't start until the building is 15 years old, it will not impact real estate finance for new buildings.
> Every field of economics agrees that rent control causes harm to the people it's supposed to help.
Is that for rent control as in New York or San Francisco, where the allowed rent increases are very small; or for rent control as in San Jose (8% until reduced to 5% in 2016) or Oregon, or maybe this bill, where the allowed rent increase is larger than most of market increases?
A limit of 5% + inflation is probably more than most markets in most years, and more importantly, is a big enough limit that most leases will be able to catch up to the market over a few years.
So, this would still distort the rental market, but in a much more limited way, that may be more likely to actually help people.
