“Three Questions” is a regular series in which award-winning advocacy journalist Patrick Range McDonald and other members of Housing Is A Human Right answer your questions, or questions we’ve heard in the past, about housing issues.
Why does Housing Is A Human Right keep pushing for rent control when all economists say it’s a harmful way to address the housing affordability crisis?
Well, not all economists say rent control is harmful. In fact, not long ago, a group of 32 top economists (thirty-two!) sent a letter to the Biden administration, saying rent regulations are extremely helpful for tenants and society as a whole. The economists even took on what other economists (and the real estate industry and its offshoot, the so-called YIMBY “movement”) have said, noting that the “economics 101 model that predicts rent regulations will have negative effects on the housing sector is being proven wrong by empirical studies that better analyze real word dynamics.” In other words, old anti-rent control arguments are incorrect and outdated.
The 32 economists (thirty-two!) also wrote that “substantial empirical evidence” shows that “rent regulation policies do not limit new construction, nor overall supply of housing.”
And while I’m not an economist, I’ve covered the real estate industry for years, including the rise of corporate landlords. It’s easy to figure out that the economics 101 model is NOT going to stop corporate landlords from charging excessive rents year after year. In fact, many corporate landlords have tried to rig the rental housing market by using a software program by a Big Tech firm called RealPage so they can keep charging higher and higher rents no matter what. It continues to be HUGE scandal.
So, the only way to rein in corporate landlords, who keep buying more and more apartment buildings and will keep trying to rig the market somehow, is through rent regulations, such as rent stabilization. There is no other effective tool. And regulations can be done in a way in which landlords can still make a healthy return on investment, they just won’t be able to buy superyachts and mansions all over the world. They can buy one mansion and a regular yacht while the rest of us try to make ends meet.
– Patrick Range McDonald
Why is AIDS Healthcare Foundation (the parent organization of Housing Is A Human Right) involved in housing issues? I hear people say that AHF should just stick with helping people with HIV/AIDS.
AHF is committed to housing because it is the #1 social determinant of health. The largest unmet need of our clients is affordable housing. It is nearly impossible for a homeless person to succeed in their treatment of a chronic illness.
In addition, unaffordable housing is a moral outrage akin to AIDS in the 1980s. But people turned a blind eye to AIDS the same way that people are averting their sight from the monumental humanitarian crisis that is homelessness in America. AHF works to solve humanitarian crises, not ignore them.
– Michael Weinstein, co-founder and president of AIDS Healthcare Foundation
Isn’t gentrification a good thing?
If you’re talking about the affluent people moving into new, high-rent, luxury-housing buildings in a middle- or working-class neighborhood, where expensive restaurants and high-end retail stores suddenly pop up, then I guess it’s good for them – if you like high-rent apartments, expensive restaurants, and high-end retail stores.
But gentrification is not good for the middle- and working-class people who can’t afford the skyrocketing rents that come to a neighborhood with new high-rent luxury housing, new expensive restaurants, and new high-end retail stores. They’re pushed out of their longtime community, and have a hard time finding affordable housing elsewhere, often having to move far away.
Overall, that doesn’t seem right or fair – only one group of people is benefiting from gentrification, if you’re not counting the luxury-housing developers, corporate landlords, and high-end retail owners. In the end, I think any fair-minded person would agree that gentrification is ultimately not a good thing.
It’s why Housing Is A Human Right not only pushes back against pro-gentrification land-use policies, but also advocates for the “3 Ps”: protect tenants through rent regulations and other protections; preserve existing affordable housing, don’t demolish it to make way for luxury housing; produce new affordable housing. That’s good for everyone, especially the people who are hit hardest by the housing affordability crisis: middle- and working-class folks.
– Patrick Range McDonald
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