Exclusive — Conservative Groups Oppose Kamala Harris’s Rent Control Proposal: ‘Most Efficient’ Policy to Destroy a City

Americans for Tax Reform (ATR), the Heritage Foundation, and more than 30 conservative groups on Tuesday announced that they oppose Vice President Kamala Harris’s rent price control proposal, Breitbart News has learned exclusively.

Harris in mid-August copied President Joe Biden’s rent price control proposal to cap rent hikes to five percent nationwide over the next two years for all landlords who own more than 50 units.

The conservatives told congressional lawmakers and state attorneys general, in a letter obtained by Breitbart News, that the rent control proposal would do much more harm than good, wiping out many cities’ supplies of affordable rental housing.

9-3-24 – ATR Coalition Letter Opposing Housing Price Controls by jmanship on Scribd

The coalition wrote, “Even the socialist Swedish economist Assar Lindbeck once said, ‘In many cases rent control appears to be the most efficient technique presently known to destroy a city — except for bombing.’”

The coalition letter noted that San Francisco, California, already attempted virtually the same proposal that Harris wants to enact, and it had disastrous results:

Nationwide rent control and further restrictions on housing providers will cause a sharp decrease in new housing, affordable rentals being converted to AirBnBs/sold as condos, millions of higher-risk tenants being refused any housing (likely worsening the problem of homelessness in cities), and overall rent rate increases.

An NBER study revealed that the 1994 rent-control expansion in San Francisco led to landlords converting their properties to condos or tenancies in common. Instead of encouraging affordable housing, the government incentivized converting away from it.

This study also found that, because of rent control, there was a city-wide rent price increase of 5.1 percent. Because of existing tenants’ depressed rents, many stay in apartments for longer than they otherwise would. This reduces the supply of rent-controlled properties for potential tenants, thus increasing the prices of other, non-controlled properties. [Emphasis added]

“In Cambridge, Mass., where rent control was abolished, economists found that direct dollar investments in housing units doubled over just a few years,” the conservative leaders added.

They cited another study which found that when the “number of rent-controlled units double in an urban area, there is a 16.2 percent increase in severely inadequate housing units and a 14.7 percent increase in moderately inadequate housing.”

As Breitbart News’s John Carney and Alex Marlow in July wrote in the Breitbart Business Digest, this sort of rent price control proposal is not meant to serve as a serious call for Congress to enact, instead, it is merely an attempt to buy votes:

Fortunately, this proposal is unlikely to become law. Tax depreciation schedules are fixed by statute, meaning Congress must pass Biden’s national rent-control plan.

Of course, it’s not really intended to become law. It’s another cynical attempt by the Biden administration to buy votes from renters who feel burdened by housing inflation caused by Biden’s policies. The administration lacks a serious policy-making apparatus, relying instead on political schemes dressed up as public policies.

“Nationwide rent control and price controls (like banning pricing algorithms) will further inflate housing costs,” the conservatives concluded in their letter to congressional lawmakers and state attorneys general. “Despite the mountain of evidence against the use of price controls, politicians cannot resist telling voters that they can simply lower prices without any consequence. We urge lawmakers and state attorneys general to oppose and fight these dangerous efforts in the housing industry.”