Rent Control
Rent Control

Author: William Dennis Keating

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 1998

Total Pages: 276

ISBN-13:

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Rent control, the governmental regulation of the level of payment and tenure rights for rental housing, occupies a small but unique niche within the broad domain of public regulation of markets. The price of housing cannot be regulated by establishing a single price for a given level of quality, as other commodities such as electricity and sugar have been regulated at various times. Rent regulation requires that a price level be established for each individual housing unit, which in turn implies a level of complexity in structure and oversight that is unequaled. Housing provides a sense of security, defines our financial and emotional well-being, and influences our self-definition. Not surprisingly, attempts to regulate its price arouse intense controversy. Residential rent control is praised as a guarantor of affordable housing, excoriated as an indefensible distortion of the market, and both admired and feared as an attempt to transform the very meaning of housing access and ownership. This book provides a thorough assessment of the evolution of rent regulation in North American cities. Contributors sketch rent control's origins, legal status, economic impacts, political dynamics, and social meaning. Case studies of rent regulation in specific North American cities from New York and Washington, DC, to Berkeley and Toronto are also presented. This is an important primer for students, advocates, and practitioners of housing policy and provides essential insights on the intersection of government and markets.

Rent Control in North America and Four European Countries
Rent Control in North America and Four European Countries

Author: William Smith

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2020-02-18

Total Pages: 210

ISBN-13: 1000678911

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Rent control, the governmental regulation of the level of payment and tenure rights for rental housing, occupies a small but unique niche within the broad domain of public regulation of markets. The price of housing cannot be regulated by establishing a single price for a given level of quality, as other commodities such as electricity and sugar have been regulated at various times. Rent regulation requires that a price level be established for each individual housing unit, which in turn implies a level of complexity in structure and oversight that is unequaled.Housing provides a sense of security, defines our financial and emotional well-being, and influences our self-definition. Not surprisingly, attempts to regulate its price arouse intense controversy. Residential rent control is praised as a guarantor of affordable housing, excoriated as an indefensible distortion of the market, and both admired and feared as an attempt to transform the very meaning of housing access and ownership.This book provides a thorough assessment of the evolution of rent regulation in North American cities. Contributors sketch rent control's origins, legal status, economic impacts, political dynamics, and social meaning. Case studies of rent regulation in specific North American cities from New York and Washington, DC, to Berkeley and Toronto are also presented. This is an important primer for students, advocates, and practitioners of housing policy and provides essential insights on the intersection of government and markets.

The Economics and Law of Rent Control
The Economics and Law of Rent Control

Author: Kaushik Basu

Publisher:

Published: 2004

Total Pages: 41

ISBN-13:

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What stirs most people against rent control laws in the United States and elsewhere are stories of people who have held apartments for many years and now pay absurdly low rents for them. There are important reasons for removing rent controls, but the shock value of a low rent is not one of them.Basu and Emerson construct a model of second-generation rent control, describing a regime that does not permit rent increases for sitting tenants - or their eviction. When an apartment becomes vacant, however, the landlord is free to negotiate a new contract with a higher rent. They argue that this stylized system is a good (though polar) approximation of rent control regimes that exist in many cities in India, the United States, and elsewhere.Under such a regime, if inflation exists, landlords prefer to rent to tenants who plan to stay only a short time. The authors assume that there are different types of tenants (where type refers to the amount of time tenants stay in an apartment) and that landlords are unable to determine types before they rent to a tenant. Contracts contingent on departure date are forbidden, so a problem of adverse selection arises. Short stayers are harmed by rent control while long-term tenants benefit. In addition, the equilibrium is Pareto inefficient.Basu and Emerson show that when tenant types are determined endogenously (when a tenant decides how long to stay in one place based on market signals) in the presence of rent control, there may be multiple equilibria, with one equilibrium Pareto-dominated by another. In other words, many lifestyle choices are made based on conditions in the rental housing market. One thing rent control may do is decrease the mobility of the labor force, because tenants may choose to remain in a city where they occupy rent-controlled apartments rather than accept a higher-paying job in another city. Basu and Emerson show that abolishing the rent control regime can do two things: Shift the equilibrium to a better outcome and result in lower rents, across the board.A version of this paper - a product of the Office of the Senior Vice President and Chief Economist, Development Economics - was presented at an Applied Microeconomics Workshop at Cornell University.

Economics in One Lesson
Economics in One Lesson

Author: Henry Hazlitt

Publisher: Crown Currency

Published: 2010-08-11

Total Pages: 220

ISBN-13: 0307760626

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With over a million copies sold, Economics in One Lesson is an essential guide to the basics of economic theory. A fundamental influence on modern libertarianism, Hazlitt defends capitalism and the free market from economic myths that persist to this day. Considered among the leading economic thinkers of the “Austrian School,” which includes Carl Menger, Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich (F.A.) Hayek, and others, Henry Hazlitt (1894-1993), was a libertarian philosopher, an economist, and a journalist. He was the founding vice-president of the Foundation for Economic Education and an early editor of The Freeman magazine, an influential libertarian publication. Hazlitt wrote Economics in One Lesson, his seminal work, in 1946. Concise and instructive, it is also deceptively prescient and far-reaching in its efforts to dissemble economic fallacies that are so prevalent they have almost become a new orthodoxy. Economic commentators across the political spectrum have credited Hazlitt with foreseeing the collapse of the global economy which occurred more than 50 years after the initial publication of Economics in One Lesson. Hazlitt’s focus on non-governmental solutions, strong — and strongly reasoned — anti-deficit position, and general emphasis on free markets, economic liberty of individuals, and the dangers of government intervention make Economics in One Lesson every bit as relevant and valuable today as it has been since publication.

The Economics of Rent Control
The Economics of Rent Control

Author: Adam Millsap

Publisher:

Published: 2018

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13:

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Affordable housing is on the minds of voters and state and local officials across the country. One policy often proposed to temper high rents is rent control. In its most basic form rent control is a government-imposed cap on rent and using it as a means of keeping rents below the market rate is an old idea, dating to at least the 16th century. But while rent control may seem like an easy way to control housing prices, the bulk of the evidence shows that it's an inefficient policy with several negative side effects. Rent control decreases the amount of rental housing, raises prices in the uncontrolled sector, reduces the quality of rental units, leads to a misallocation of units, and decreases tenant mobility. It also transfers wealth from landlords to tenants even though some landlords are poorer than their tenants, and this may foster hostility between the two groups. Instead of rent control, cities can make housing more affordable by allowing more building to enable the filtering process to work. They can also provide rent subsidies to alleviate any remaining affordability issues. By looking beyond rent control, cities can help create more affordable housing options for lower-income people.

Rent Control
Rent Control

Author: Robert Albon

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2024-01-15

Total Pages: 142

ISBN-13: 1003834760

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First Published in 1987, Rent Control discusses the economics of rent control, citing numerous international examples of the detrimental effects of rigid rent control. Various policy options to revamp rental housing markets are examined critically. Rent control has proved a key issue in both politics and economics, repeatedly dividing interventionists and free marketeers. Consequently, its history - throughout the world- is extremely involved and tangled. Successive governments have sought to reverse the legislation of their predecessors without appearing, on the one hand, to remove the right to manage their own properties from landlords, or on the other to condone the behavior of unscrupulous and exploitative landlords. The authors argue that partial repeals of rent control have been ineffective at best, and counterproductive at worst. Only complete abolition of rent and eviction controls imposed by the state can bring about revitalised housing markets, and the book ends with a discussion of how this can be done without causing too much hardship. This is an interesting read for scholars and researchers of political economy and British economy

Rent Control
Rent Control

Author: Charles W. Baird

Publisher: Cato Institute

Published: 1980-06-01

Total Pages: 117

ISBN-13: 1937184404

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In this study, Dr. Charles Baird addresses the rent control boom currently underway in the United States. Beginning with the fundamentals of supply and demand for housing, Baird expands his analysis to include questions of equity, housing availability, and special interest manipulation of regulatory statutes. He shows that high housing costs do not occur in a vacuum but are related to many other governmental policies including zoning, housing codes, and environmental issues.