San Francisco is famously America’s most expensive city. That means there’s all kinds of political agitation for rent regulations and other affordable housing mandates. But a new study from the National Bureau of Economic Research finds that the city’s rent control laws help a certain set of haves while costing a larger set of have-nots.
In 1994, the City by the Bay imposed rent regulations via ballot initiative on “small multifamily housing built prior to 1980.” This allowed Stanford researchers to compare units constructed before and after that year. As might be expected, rent control helped keep people where they already were, with “the beneficiaries of rent control…between 10 and 20 [percent] more likely to remain at their 1994 address relative to the control group.” The longer you’ve been stationary and the older you are, the stronger that effect, writes Brian Doherty in the latest edition of Reason.
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