Rent regulation
This is an accepted version of this page Rent regulation is a system of laws for the rental market of dwellings, with controversial effects on affordability of housing and tenancies.
[citation needed] There is consensus among economists that rent control reduces the quality and quantity of rental housing units.
[7]: 1 [8][9][10][11][13][14][16][17] However, some economists challenge this consensus and argue that controls do not have a statistically significant impact on quantity and quality of housing units.
[22][23] This analysis targeted nominal rent freezes, and the studies conducted were mainly focused on rental prices in Manhattan, or elsewhere in the United States.
"[24]: 204 [25]: 1 A 2009 review of the economic literature[23]: 106 by Blair Jenkins through EconLit covering theoretical and empirical research on multiple aspects of the issue, including housing availability, maintenance and housing quality, rental rates, political and administrative costs, and redistribution, for both first generation and second generation rent control systems, found that "the economics profession has reached a rare consensus: Rent control creates many more problems than it solves".
In a 2012 poll of 41 economists by the Initiative on Global Markets (IGM) Economic Experts Panel, which queried opinions on the statement "Local ordinances that limit rent increases for some rental housing units, such as in New York and San Francisco, have had a positive impact over the past three decades on the amount and quality of broadly affordable rental housing in cities that have used them," 13 members said they strongly disagreed, 20 disagreed, 1 agreed, and 7 either did not answer, were undecided, or had no opinion.
[34]: 5 [35]: 1 The Swedish economist Assar Lindbeck, a housing expert, said that "rent control appears to be the most efficient technique presently known to destroy a city – except for bombing".
In 1562, Pope Pius IV granted Jews the right to own property worth up to 1,500 Roman scudi and enacted rent stabilization.
In 1586, Pope Sixtus V issued a bull ordering landlords to rent out houses to Jewish tenants at reasonable rates.
[50][52] Rent increases above the amount prescribed by regulation may be disputed by application to the ACT Civil and Administrative Tribunal (ACAT).
For example, in Ontario the Residential Tenancies Act 2006 requires that prices for rented properties do not rise more than 2.5 percent each year, or a lower figure fixed by a government minister.
Many states, such as Berlin, have a constitutional right to adequate housing, and require buildings to make dwelling spaces of a certain size and ceiling height.
Regulation for all new tenancies was abolished by the Housing Act 1988, leaving the basic regulatory framework was "freedom of contract" by the landlord to set any price.
Rent regulations survive among a small number of council houses, and often the rates set by local authorities mirror escalating prices in the non-regulated private market.
[citation needed] In the 1986 case of Fisher v. City of Berkeley,[73] the US Supreme court held that there was no incompatibility between rent control and the Sherman Act.
[74] As of 2018, 4 states (California, New York, New Jersey, and Maryland) and the District of Columbia have localities in which some form of residential rent control is in effect (for normal structures, excluding mobile homes).
[79] In 2019 Oregon's legislature passed a bill which made the state the first in the nation to adopt a state-wide rent control policy.
[80]: 1 [81]: 1 In November 2021, voters in Saint Paul, Minnesota passed a rent control ballot initiative which capped annual rent increases at 3 percent, included vacancy control, and did not exempt new construction, nor allow inflation to be added to the allowable rate increase.
