Fairmind

Rent Control

Should rent increases be capped by law?

11-minute read (main content)

Mid-rise apartment buildings with white and brown stucco façades, rows of windows, and small balconies with white railings, partly framed by a leafy tree branch in the foreground
Image: Juan Pablo Daniel / Pexels

A Fair-Minded Guide

Form your own view with:

  • Each side’s best arguments
  • A range of example viewpoints
  • All facts verified and footnoted

Skeptical? See Accuracy and Fairness

Facts

To understand the arguments pro and con below, here are a few preliminary facts about current residential rent control laws in the United States:

  • Rent control limits how much rents can rise. Different dwellings can have different rents based on their size, location, condition, and so on. But under rent control, the landlord can increase the rent on a tenant by only a limited percentage each year.

  • Current rent control laws fall roughly into two groups:

    • Stricter caps limit annual rent increases to rates near or below inflation. The primary purpose is to hold rents down so tenants can continue to afford their living situations. This can lead to long-term tenants paying well below market rates.

    • Looser caps peg to inflation plus 5%–7%, up to about 10% a year. The primary goal is to prevent sudden spikes rather than to hold rents down. Looser caps are sometimes called “anti-gouging” laws.

  • “Rent stabilization” is a common but inconsistently used term. Sometimes it refers to looser caps, and sometimes (as with New York City’s system) it refers to stricter caps. This guide uses “rent control” for all laws that cap rent increases, and “stricter” or “looser” caps to distinguish them. For New York City, we use “rent stabilization,” the official name of its program, because the city also has a separate, much smaller program officially called “rent control.”1

  • Three states cap rent increases statewide. Oregon, California, and Washington have looser caps, and each exempts newer buildings.2 California also lets localities adopt stricter caps; Oregon and Washington bar them.3

  • Most states have no caps, and a majority bar their localities from adopting one.4 For example, in 1994 Massachusetts voters enacted a statewide ban on rent control, preempting local rent control laws that existed in places like Boston and Cambridge.5

  • Nearly two hundred localities nationwide have their own rent-control laws. Most are in New York, New Jersey, and California.6 Two notable examples of stricter caps: New York City’s Rent Guidelines Board sets annual increases for about 1 million rent-stabilized apartments; in 2026 it froze them.7 San Francisco limits annual increases on rent-controlled apartments to 60% of local inflation.8

  • Rent control typically covers only some housing. Laws commonly exempt newer buildings and certain types of housing, such as single-family homes. As a result, within the same locality some tenants have their rent increases capped while others do not.9

  • Some caps reset between tenants, and some don’t. Under the three statewide caps, a landlord can generally set any rent for a new tenant once the previous one moves out.10 Some local caps allow only a limited increase between tenants.11 Others allow none beyond the usual annual increase, including New York City’s rent stabilization.12

  • Today’s debates about rent control have two levels: (1) Should there be rent control? (2) If so, on what terms? This guide covers both levels.

Factors to Consider

Below are four factors to consider, each with arguments from supporters and opponents. At the end of this guide, Appendix: Editorial Choices lists other factors and arguments we did not include in this main section with explanations why.

1. Large Rent Increases

In the U.S. economy, the prices of most goods are set by supply and demand, with no legal limit on increases. In rental housing, this means a tenant’s renewal can sometimes include a large increase. Looser price caps are meant to prevent this. (Stricter caps also address it, but they go further. We will focus on them in Factor 2.)

Rent control supporters argue that housing differs from most goods, which people can buy less of or go without when prices jump. With housing, a tenant facing a large rent increase cannot easily leave: leaving means finding a new place, moving, switching schools, and other life disruptions. In supporters’ view, a loose cap protects tenants without overly restricting landlords: far-below-market rents can rise faster than inflation back toward the market rate, just not all at once. Supporters argue that this is better than leaving tenants open to price gouging, where some landlords will exploit a tight market to maximize their profit with a large rent increase.

Rent control opponents reject the price-gouging analogy. They argue that price-gouging laws target sudden spikes during unforeseen emergencies,13 whereas a lasting rise in demand for an area’s housing is the ordinary working of a market. In their view, a large renewal increase simply reflects what the home is now worth to renters, painful as that is for the existing tenant. Opponents add that vacancies and turnover are costly for landlords, who therefore have reason to keep tenants from leaving. They note that in practice existing tenants typically get smaller increases than new tenants, not larger ones.14

What else to know: “Landlord” can describe anyone from an individual who rents out a single home, to the owner of an apartment building with dozens of units, to a company that owns more than 100,000 apartments across the country.15 Critics often single out large corporate landlords, arguing that they have the resources and incentive to push rents as high as the market will bear. Research finds that corporate and institutional owners do charge somewhat more, especially after acquiring properties.16 But in the most direct comparison—the same buildings under corporate versus non-corporate owners—the gap was modest.17

The key question: If market conditions would normally cause a landlord to raise the rent steeply, should the landlord have that ability or should it be capped loosely?

2. Holding Rents Down

Whereas looser caps protect against large rent increases, stricter caps go further by holding rents below market rates on an ongoing basis. In a rising market, the gap between capped and market rents generally widens over time. Where rents reset between tenants, the largest benefits go to long-term tenants. Where they don’t, new tenants inherit a unit’s discount from the market rate.

Rent control supporters argue that market rents can become unaffordable even for people with stable incomes.18 They say a stricter cap is necessary for many lower- and middle-income people to remain in their homes and communities rather than being gradually priced out—people like teachers, retirees, and working families. Supporters point to San Francisco, where extending rent control to small apartment buildings in 1994 kept tenants in the city who otherwise would have left, especially older and long-tenured tenants and racial minorities.19 Supporters also say the benefits mostly reach people who need them: in New York City, rent-stabilized households have a median income about a third below that of market-rate renters.20

Rent control opponents argue that holding rents below market benefits those who already have rent-controlled homes at the expense of those who don’t. Because rent control generally applies regardless of the tenant’s financial need, a newcomer can pay far more than a better-off neighbor for an identical unit, and the biggest breaks can go to those who need them least. In New York City in 2023, among renters with incomes in the top quarter, those in rent-stabilized apartments paid about a third less than those in market-rate apartments; in the lower three quarters, the gap was about 15% to 22%.21 Opponents add that the large majority of published studies have found that rent control raises uncontrolled rents in the same locality.22

What else to know: The two sides’ New York figures describe different aspects of the same thing. Rent-stabilized tenants have lower incomes than market-rate renters and are more likely to be Black or Hispanic.23 But the size of a tenant’s discount, whether measured in dollars or as a percentage, depends mostly on where they live and how long they’ve stayed, not on how much they need the help—a pattern studies of New York have found for decades.24

The key question: Do the benefits of keeping existing tenants in their homes at below-market rents outweigh the costs to other renters—and does it matter that those benefits aren’t targeted by financial need?

3. The Housing Stock

Rents rise when more people want to live in an area than there are homes available. Rent control limits what tenants pay, but it does not add housing. So a central question is about rent control’s effect on rental housing itself: how much gets built, how much stays on the rental market, and whether maintenance and upkeep are affected. This aspect of the debate applies to both types of caps, but more to stricter ones.

Rent control supporters say that building more housing can ease rents over time, but it does little for a tenant facing a steep increase this year; also, rents in desirable neighborhoods can keep climbing even where construction is strong. Supporters add that today’s laws often protect construction by exempting new buildings. Regarding maintenance, many supporters concede that caps can reduce what owners spend, but they argue that the relevant comparison is with what tenants would otherwise face: low-income renters often live with poor conditions whether or not their rent is regulated; a tenant whose landlord can’t retaliate with a steep rent increase can more safely demand repairs.25

Rent control opponents argue that when caps artificially hold down rents, there’s less reason to build rentals, keep them on the market, or maintain them. The result, opponents argue, is fewer and worse homes to rent.26 That concern is a main reason economists have long been among rent control’s strongest critics.27 Opponents concede that exemptions for new construction can help, but only if there’s strong reason to believe they will last. In California, voters have been asked three times since 2018 to repeal or loosen the state law that shields newer buildings from local caps.28 Regarding maintenance, the large majority of published studies have found that rent control leads to deterioration, including studies of modern, more flexible controls.29

The key question: How much risk to the future supply and condition of rental housing is worth accepting to protect today’s tenants?

4. Who Should Pay?

Under rent control, tenants pay less than market rent, and landlords collect correspondingly less. Rental vouchers and other government aid also make rents affordable, but they spread the expense across taxpayers. So the debate is partly about who should bear the burden of keeping rents affordable: the owners of the affected properties or the public at large.

Rent control supporters argue that landlords are entitled to a fair return, but not to every gain a rising market brings. They note that rising market rents often reflect changes in the surrounding community—new jobs, transit, public investment—rather than anything landlords have done, so limiting those gains is a reasonable way to share them with tenants. Some supporters would welcome more public aid for struggling renters, but they don’t see it as a substitute for rent control, noting that federal rental aid has long reached only about one in four eligible households.30

Rent control opponents argue that if the public wants to protect renters, the public itself should pay for that protection through taxpayer-funded rental vouchers or other government aid. Such help can go to the households that actually need it, which opponents argue is better than rent control’s lack of targeting. Opponents add that many rental properties, especially small buildings, are owned by individuals rather than corporations.31 They note that these and other landlords don’t just reap the gains of a rising market; they also bear the risk of losses when a neighborhood declines or the market softens. They add that landlords’ costs for insurance, property taxes, and maintenance can rise faster than general inflation.32 In opponents’ view, capping the gains but not the losses and costs is unfair to landlords.

What else to know: Some laws let landlords recover certain costs, and some exempt certain properties owned by individuals rather than corporations. For example, New York lets owners of rent-stabilized buildings raise rents to pay for major capital improvements, such as a new boiler or roof, but since 2019 those increases have been limited to 2% of a tenant’s rent per year and expire after 30 years.33 And California’s statewide cap exempts single-family homes and condos unless a corporation or real estate investment trust owns them, though small apartment buildings owned by individuals are generally covered.34

The key question: If some tenants cannot afford market rents, is it fair to require landlords to help them by limiting rents, or should assistance be funded more broadly?

Example Viewpoints

The questions above represent genuine tensions without easy answers. Below are examples of how different people might weigh these and other considerations to arrive at coherent positions. You might find yourself aligning with one of these viewpoints, or you might form your own opinion by combining elements from multiple of them.

Tenant Protection Advocate

In many places, rental housing is becoming unaffordable for working-class and even middle-class people. As a basic necessity, housing can’t be left to the mercies of the marketplace. Rents should have strict caps, allowing annual increases only near the rate of inflation; and the cap should stay with the apartment when a tenant moves out, so it remains affordable for the next household. Yes, some better-off tenants benefit too, but rent-controlled households mostly have lower incomes than market-rate renters, and protecting them is worth some imperfect targeting. And yes, I realize that landlords may take a hit, but in a rising market, I think they can afford less upside so teachers, retirees, and working families can stay in their homes. Beyond rent control, I support building more housing, with a time-limited exemption for new units, and more public aid for renters. But neither does what strict caps do: keep people in the homes and neighborhoods where their lives are rooted.

Shock Absorber

I’m against strict rent control that lets long-term tenants end up paying far below market rates; it creates too many problems of economic efficiency and fairness. But a looser form of rent control makes sense to protect tenants from large renewal increases. A rent increase of more than 10% is a shock that many people’s finances can’t handle. Landlords may have reasons for an occasional large increase, but they also have a responsibility not to upend tenants’ lives. So I favor a cap of 5% above inflation, never more than 10% a year, resetting for new tenants. That lets far-below-market rents move back toward the market rate, just not all at once. I also support exempting new construction, to encourage building that addresses the underlying shortage. At the end of the day, most landlords keep renewal increases modest, so a loose cap rarely gets in their way; it just catches the outliers.

Market Pragmatist

I understand why people reach for rent control, but it’s a blunt instrument that causes more harm than good. It benefits existing tenants at the expense of newcomers, and it isn’t targeted to people based on financial need. It pushes up rents for everyone not protected, discourages building, and leads landlords to spend less on maintenance. That’s why economists have been long-time critics. And even a loose cap is a foot in the door: once it is on the books, the pressure is to tighten it. Imperfect as markets are, they will do a better job than price controls at matching people to homes and causing new rental housing to be built. For those who want to protect financially challenged tenants from price shocks or fast-rising rents, the efficient way is targeted public subsidies for people who need them, funded well enough to reach far more than the one in four eligible households that federal aid reaches today. We should also make it easier to build, because more housing is the real solution to the underlying problem.

Deciding

The debate about rent control mixes questions about fairness, economic efficiency, and how to weigh the interests of today’s tenants against those of landlords and future renters. It’s no surprise that reasonable people reach different conclusions. Our goal has been to give you the facts, arguments, and a range of viewpoints to help inform your own thinking. What you decide is up to you.

(If you are wondering about something we didn’t mention, check the Editorial Choices section below. It includes other aspects of the debate we didn’t include in the main content, with explanations why.)

Appendix: Editorial Choices

In writing this guide, there were many choices to make—for example, how to frame the issue, which factors, arguments, and viewpoints to include, and how to phrase them. For those interested, below are notable choices. You can quickly scan the topics, clicking any for details.

Naming and Framing

We named this guide “Rent Control” because that is the most commonly used term for the topic. For the subtitle, we used “Should rent increases be capped by law?” because it is straightforward and neutral.

“Looser” and “Stricter” Caps

We separated the arguments about looser caps from those about stricter caps. Preventing sudden spikes has different goals and arguments than holding rents down. Debates can talk past each other when one side has in mind California’s statewide cap, which is looser, and the other is thinking of New York City’s stricter cap. Large Rent Increases focuses on looser caps. Holding Rents Down focuses on stricter ones. The other factors apply to both, although the stakes are higher for stricter caps.

We chose the terms “looser” and “stricter” because the discourse on rent control does not have consistent terminology to differentiate the concepts:

  • Economists often classify rent control by “generation”: first-generation controls froze rents, and later generations allowed regular increases, sometimes resetting between tenants.35 But generations don’t track the distinction this guide draws. In one common scheme, San Francisco’s stricter cap and California’s looser statewide cap fall in the same generation because both reset between tenants, while New York City’s rent stabilization, which doesn’t reset, falls in another. So we did not use generations to distinguish types of caps.

  • “Anti-gouging” is a term commonly used for looser rent control. We used “looser” because “anti-gouging” assumes that large rent increases are gouging; opponents dispute this.

  • Per the Facts section, “rent stabilization” is used inconsistently in the discourse. We used it only when referencing New York City’s program of that name, which is distinct from the city’s other, smaller and older program named “rent control.”

Residential versus Commercial Caps

We limited this guide to residential rent control. Although commercial rent control raises many of the same questions, commercial and residential tenancies differ in important ways—most notably, a home provides shelter, and a business does not.36 Commercial rent control is also rare in the United States.37

Public Opinion

Polls consistently find broad support for capping rent increases. In a January 2026 YouGov national poll, 68% of respondents supported rent regulations in their community that limit how much landlords can raise rents, and 18% opposed them, with majorities of Democrats (84%), independents (61%), and Republicans (61%) in favor. Even rent controls that would prohibit landlords from raising rents drew 62% support.38

Votes on actual measures have gone differently. California voters rejected measures to expand local rent control in 2018, 2020, and 2024. The last of them, Proposition 33, was defeated 60% to 40% after a campaign in which both sides spent heavily.39 Those measures would have let cities adopt stronger rent control rather than capping rents directly, so they aren’t a direct comparison with the poll questions. But support for Proposition 33 itself fell during the campaign, from 51% of likely voters in September 2024 to 42% in October.40 That suggests general support for capping rent increases doesn’t necessarily carry over to specific proposals once voters have heard the arguments on both sides.

We note public opinion here rather than in the guide’s main content because the purpose of a Fairmind guide is to help you think through the substance of an issue for yourself. Letting public opinion decide for you is the opposite of that.

Disincentive to Move

For a long-term tenant in a strictly rent-controlled apartment, moving means giving up a substantially below-market rent. As a result, such tenants move less.41 Rent control opponents argue that this leaves tenants in apartments that no longer fit their needs, such as empty nesters with more space than they’d choose to pay for. In a normal market, they say, the empty nesters would weigh the extra space against its price and often move to a smaller apartment, making their existing one available for a larger family—a good result for both households and for the market as a whole. Opponents contend that rent control distorts this situation by, in a sense, paying the empty nesters to keep space they no longer need.42

Rent control supporters respond that keeping tenants in their homes is the point. Empty nesters who stay in family-size apartments are also staying in their long-time neighborhood, near the people and places they know. Without rent control, supporters argue, many long-term tenants would have been priced out of their neighborhoods years earlier.43

We left this dispute out of the main content because it largely restates the trade-off already covered in Factor 2, Holding Rents Down. We saw it as secondary to the arguments there.

Economists’ Views

Few policies draw as much criticism from economists as rent control. The classic case, made by Milton Friedman and George Stigler in 1946, is that holding rents below market levels discourages new construction and keeps tenants in apartments they would otherwise leave, making a housing shortage worse, not better.44 That view became close to a professional consensus. In a 1990 survey, 93% of American economists agreed, at least with provisos, that a ceiling on rents reduces the quantity and quality of housing, and in a 2012 poll of prominent economists, only one of 41 agreed that rent control had improved the supply of affordable housing in New York and San Francisco.45

This consensus formed largely around “first-generation” controls, which froze rents. Later “second-generation” controls allowed regular increases, and some economists argued that these deserved a fresh look. Richard Arnott’s 1995 article “Time for Revisionism on Rent Control?” argued that the case against second-generation controls was weak in theory and evidence, and that economists should judge them case by case—though it opens by acknowledging the profession’s long-standing opposition.46

More recent studies have found both benefits and costs. In San Francisco, rent control kept covered tenants in their homes and in the city, but landlords reduced the rental supply in ways that likely raised rents citywide. The authors concluded that rent control likely contributed to the city’s gentrification—the opposite of what the policy intended.47

In Cambridge, Massachusetts, the end of rent control raised the value not only of formerly rent-controlled properties but also of nearby properties that had never been controlled, suggesting that rent control had held down the value of surrounding properties.48 A 2024 review of the empirical literature concluded that rent control slows rent growth for covered units but has a wide range of adverse effects.49

That said, some economists support at least some forms of rent control. For example, in 2023, 32 economists signed a letter backing limits on rent increases in buildings with federally backed mortgages. Drawing a parallel with the minimum wage, they argued that empirical studies were disproving the standard economic prediction that rent control harms housing.50

In The Housing Stock, we mentioned that economists have long been among rent control’s strongest critics. We left it at that in the main content because it represents the profession’s long-held and still predominant view.51 Also, the rent control debate includes value judgments, such as how to weigh existing tenants against future renters and landlords, which economic evidence alone cannot resolve.

Compensation for Flawed Competition

Some economists who support rent control argue that because moving is costly and disruptive for tenants, the competitiveness of the market is flawed. On this view, without rent control, landlords can charge existing tenants more than a competitive market would, and rent control simply brings their rents closer to that level.52

We included the point about moving costs in Large Rent Increases. But we didn’t include the larger argument in the main content because evidence suggests that, in practice, existing tenants typically get smaller rent increases than new tenants, not larger ones.53 This likely reflects that landlords also bear costs when existing tenants leave and must be replaced; as a result, landlords have reason to go easier on existing tenants, especially responsible and reliable ones.54

Corporate Landlords

Much public criticism of landlords centers on large corporate owners, who are accused of raising rents steeply after buying buildings, adding fees, filing more evictions, and neglecting maintenance.55 Some proposals would aim rent caps at these owners specifically. In 2024, President Biden called on Congress to deny a federal tax break to landlords with more than 50 units who raised rents on existing units by more than 5% a year.56 California’s statewide cap already draws a line by owner: it generally covers single-family homes and condos only when a corporation owns them.57

We considered an Example Viewpoint favoring caps only for corporate or large landlords but decided against it. Supporters of exempting individual or small owners argue that these owners are less profit-driven and more like their tenants, and so less likely to impose the increases that caps are meant to prevent.58 Others argue that large owners have market power: when mergers concentrate ownership in a neighborhood, rents rise.59 But the evidence for either claim is modest. The merger effects were moderate, and in the most direct comparison, corporate owners set asking rents about 3% higher than other owners of the same buildings, regardless of how many units the owner held.60 A viewpoint built on these distinctions would rest mainly on premises the evidence only weakly supports.

Other concerns about corporate landlords, such as fees, evictions, and coordinated pricing through shared software, raise questions beyond whether rent increases should be capped, and are being pursued through other means, such as antitrust enforcement.61

Finally, some argue that small owners should be exempt because they are less able to absorb rising costs and more likely to leave the market.62 Those arguments are made against rent control generally and are covered in the Who Should Pay? factor.

Targeting Caps by Financial Need

As discussed in Holding Rents Down, stricter caps apply regardless of a tenant’s financial need. This causes higher-income households to benefit alongside others. One seemingly obvious response is to target caps by tenants’ financial need. In practice, this is rare.

In New York City, from 1994 to 2019, a landlord could petition to remove an apartment from rent stabilization if its rent exceeded a set threshold and the household’s income exceeded another—$200,000 in the provision’s final years—in each of the two previous years.63 Over twenty-five years, the provision applied to only 6,662 apartments, a small fraction of the city’s roughly 1 million rent-stabilized apartments; a 2019 law ended the provision.64 We are not aware of similar provisions in use at a significant scale elsewhere in the United States.

One reason targeting is rare is that it is hard to build into a cap. Because tenants would have reason to understate their income, it can’t simply be self-reported. It would have to be checked against tax records when a household applies and then rechecked periodically.65

Also, targeting can work against the goals of the policy:66

  • If a tenant’s income rises just past a financial-need threshold, the rent could jump, and the tenant may need to leave the home where their roots are—exactly the thing that rent control supporters argue should not happen.

  • If the cap applies only while a tenant’s income is below the threshold, landlords would have reason to prefer applicants above the threshold, whose rents are not capped, over the lower-income households the policy is meant to help.

Because it is rare in practice and has little sustained support on either side of the debate, we have left targeting by financial need to this note in the appendix.

Property Rights

Some rent control opponents make an argument from principle: it’s a free country; if I own a property, I should be able to rent it at whatever price a willing tenant will pay. In this view, a rent cap is a kind of theft, taking part of a property’s value from its owner.67

We did not include this argument in the main content for three reasons.

Owning a rental property already comes with many legal limits. Examples include habitability codes, anti-discrimination laws, and eviction procedures—limits that most rent control opponents accept. So the question is not whether the government may limit how owners use rental property but whether the particular limit of rent control is fair. Calling rent control theft treats that question as already answered.

The constitutional question is largely settled. Some opponents argue that rent control violates the Constitution’s ban on taking private property without compensation. But the Supreme Court has repeatedly upheld rent control against such challenges, starting in 1921.68 Recent challenges have focused mainly on limits on evicting tenants or declining to renew leases, which often accompany rent caps. In 2024, the Court declined to hear four of them.69

The stronger version is already in the guide. That version doesn’t call rent control theft. It argues that rent control unfairly makes landlords alone pay for something the public wants: affordable housing for tenants. That argument is covered in Who Should Pay?.

States that Ban Rent Control

Today, 29 states do not have rent control at the state level and also prohibit their localities from enacting it.70 We alluded to this in the Facts section, but we did not use it as an argument against rent control. The argument would have been something to the effect of, if so many states are against it, there must be something bad about rent control.

This argument has intuitive appeal, but some of the state bans began as initiatives of the real estate industry. For example, the Illinois Realtors association describes the state’s 1997 ban as its own initiative.71 Most bans were enacted by legislatures, but in Massachusetts, where voters imposed the ban, the 1994 ballot measure was launched by a coalition of landlords; it passed narrowly statewide, while Boston, Cambridge, and Brookline, the three communities that had rent control, voted against it.72 So the number of states with bans reflects not only legislators’ and voters’ views of rent control but also the political influence of the real estate industry.

In forming your own view, it’s better to weigh rent control on its merits, as presented in the guide’s main content, than to infer its merits from how many or which states ban it.

Local Control

Whether states should leave the choice to localities is a debate in its own right. Supporters of local choice argue that housing conditions differ from one community to the next, so each should be able to set its own rules.73 Supporters of statewide preemption argue that housing supply is a statewide concern—a shortage in one city affects people seeking jobs there and employers seeking workers—so the state should set a uniform rule.74

We left this debate out of the main content because it’s not directly about whether there should be rent control. Rather, it’s about whether states or localities should decide. In practice, positions on local control often track views on rent control itself, and those underlying arguments are covered in the main content.

Administration and Enforcement

Rent control has to be administered. Local programs commonly have a rent board or agency that registers controlled units, sets or publishes allowable increases, and hears disputes between landlords and tenants, often funded by fees on rental units. Rent control opponents argue that this machinery adds cost and red tape. In 2023, Minneapolis city staff estimated that enforcing the rent control options under consideration would cost the city $1 million to $1.5 million a year.75 Opponents of a 2018 California ballot measure that would have let cities expand rent control warned that it would allow “unelected bureaucrats” to impose fees on housing.76

We left this issue out of the main content because the costs, while real, are small relative to the stakes of the debate. San Francisco’s rent board fee, for example, is $59 per unit per year, and landlords may pass half of it on to tenants.77 It is hard to see anyone determining their position on rent control due primarily to the administrative overhead.

Footnotes

  1. According to the city’s 2023 Housing and Vacancy Survey, about 960,600 apartments were rent-stabilized and about 24,020 were rent-controlled. (Rent Control FAQs, New York City Rent Guidelines Board, accessed October 24, 2026.) ↩

  2. California allows 5% plus local inflation, up to 10%; exempts buildings less than 15 years old and, if tenants are notified in writing, single-family homes and condos not owned by a corporation, REIT, or LLC with a corporate member. (Cal. Civ. Code § 1947.12.) Oregon allows 7% plus inflation, capped at 10% (Or. Rev. Stat. § 90.324(1)(b)) for buildings at least 15 years old (Or. Rev. Stat. § 90.323(2)(d), (5)(a)). Washington allows 7% plus inflation or 10%, whichever is lower (Wash. Rev. Code § 59.18.700) and exempts new construction for 12 years (Wash. Rev. Code § 59.18.710). ↩

  3. Oregon and Washington bar local rent control, with narrow exceptions such as housing the local government owns or subsidizes. (Or. Rev. Stat. § 91.225; Wash. Rev. Code § 35.21.830.) California permits local rent control, but its Costa-Hawkins Act exempts newer buildings and single-family homes from local caps and lets rents reset between tenancies. (Cal. Civ. Code § 1954.52; Cal. Civ. Code § 1954.53.) ↩

  4. 31 states bar local rent control by statute, and Minnesota allows it only when voters approve it at a general election. (Where Cities Can Set Rent Limits: The 50-State Rent Control Preemption Map (2026), Landlord Atlas, updated October 2, 2026.) ↩

  5. Massachusetts Question 9, Prohibition of Rent Control Initiative (1994), Ballotpedia, accessed October 20, 2026. ↩

  6. Rent Control Laws by State, National Multifamily Housing Council, August 2026. In totaling the localities listed in this document, we counted 185. The Council is against rent control, but the source document is a compendium of data without evident bias. ↩

  7. Anthony Izaguirre, Rent Board Fulfills Mamdani’s Vow to Freeze the Rent on 1 Million NYC Apartments, Associated Press, June 25, 2026. ↩

  8. Learn about Rent Increases in San Francisco, San Francisco Rent Board, accessed October 22, 2026. ↩

  9. For example, New York City’s rent stabilization mainly covers apartments in buildings of six or more units built before 1974. (Rent Control FAQs, New York City Rent Guidelines Board, accessed October 24, 2026.) California’s statewide cap exempts most single-family homes and condos not owned by corporations. (Cal. Civ. Code § 1947.12.) ↩

  10. California’s statewide cap and its Costa-Hawkins Act, which governs local caps, both let landlords set the initial rent for a new tenancy. (Cal. Civ. Code § 1947.12; Cal. Civ. Code § 1954.53.) Oregon’s and Washington’s caps limit only increases during a tenancy. Oregon’s one exception limits the new rent when the landlord ended the previous tenancy without cause during its first year. (Or. Rev. Stat. § 90.323; Wash. Rev. Code § 59.18.700.) ↩

  11. For example, Washington, D.C., allows an increase of 10% after a tenant moves out voluntarily or is evicted for cause, or 20% if that tenant stayed more than 10 years. (D.C. Code § 42-3502.13.) St. Paul, Minnesota, allows an increase of inflation plus 8% after certain vacancies. (Rent Stabilization, City of Saint Paul, accessed October 24, 2026.) ↩

  12. New York City’s rent stabilization law allowed an increase of up to 20% between tenants until the legislature repealed it in 2019. (Rebecca C. Lewis, Housing Deal May Include Provision to Let Landlords Increase Rents on Vacant Rent-Stabilized Apartments, City & State New York, April 2, 2024.) In New York City, a new tenant now pays the previous tenant’s legal rent plus the same annual guideline increase that applies to lease renewals. (Vacancy Leases, New York City Rent Guidelines Board, accessed October 26, 2026.) ↩

  13. Helen Fessenden, Price Gouging, Econ Focus, Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, fourth quarter 2017. ↩

  14. Nationally, rent changes at lease renewal are often small or zero, while rents change much more when new tenants move in. (Brian Adams et al., Disentangling Rent Index Differences: Data, Methods, and Scope, Working Paper 22-38R, Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, September 28, 2023, p. 6. A revised version appeared in American Economic Review: Insights in 2024.) A Statistics Canada study found that long-term tenants in Canada paid about 19% less than first-year tenants in 2021, after adjusting for dwelling and neighborhood characteristics. It attributed the gap mainly to landlords’ wish to avoid vacancies, avoid the cost of finding new tenants, and keep tenants they consider reliable, along with rent regulation in some provinces. (Samuel MacIsaac and David Wavrock, Renters’ Shelter Costs by Duration of Tenancy, Economic and Social Reports, Statistics Canada, August 27, 2025.) ↩

  15. The largest owner, Greystar, owned 119,160 apartments as of January 1, 2026. (2026 Rankings: NMHC Top 50 Owners, National Multifamily Housing Council, accessed October 27, 2026.) It also managed more than 1 million apartments, most of them for other owners. (2026 Rankings: NMHC Top 50 Managers, National Multifamily Housing Council, accessed October 27, 2026.) ↩

  16. Large investors in single-family homes have raised rents faster than other landlords after buying properties. (Keyoung Lee and David Wylie, Institutional Investors, Rents, and Neighborhood Change in the Single Family Residential Market, Working Paper 24-13, Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, July 9, 2024.) ↩

  17. In New York City apartment buildings, corporate owners set asking rents about 3% higher than non-corporate owners of the same buildings, and the size of the owner’s portfolio did not explain the difference. Because much of the raw gap between corporate and other owners disappeared once differences between their buildings were accounted for, the authors concluded that many accusations against corporate landlords may be overstated. The gap was smaller in buildings where many units were rent-stabilized. (Katharine W. H. Harwood et al., The Rise of Corporate Landlords: An Examination of Behavioral Differences in the Multifamily Market, Real Estate Economics, September 28, 2025.) ↩

  18. In 2024, 22.7 million renter households—49% of the total—were cost burdened, spending more than 30% of their income on housing and utilities; about 12.1 million spent more than half. (The State of the Nation’s Housing 2026, Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University, June 17, 2026.) ↩

  19. The 1994 ballot measure extended San Francisco’s rent control to buildings of four or fewer units built before 1980. Covered tenants were more likely than comparable uncovered tenants to remain at their address and in the city years later. The effects were stronger among older and longer-tenured tenants and among racial minorities. The authors found that most tenants who stayed because of rent control would otherwise have left San Francisco altogether. (Rebecca Diamond et al., The Effects of Rent Control Expansion on Tenants, Landlords, and Inequality: Evidence from San Francisco, American Economic Review 109, no. 9 (2019): 3365–3394.) ↩

  20. In 2023, the median household income of rent-stabilized households was about $60,000, compared with about $91,000 for market-rate renters, and about two-thirds of rent-stabilized households had incomes below 80% of the area median. (Matthew Murphy et al., Understanding Different Segments of New York City’s Rent-Stabilized Housing Stock, NYU Furman Center, February 19, 2026.) ↩

  21. The analysis used the city’s 2023 Housing and Vacancy Survey to compare median rents paid by rent-stabilized and market-rate tenants within each income group. Stabilized tenants in the top quarter of incomes paid about $1,000 a month less, a 33% difference; in the top tenth, about $1,300 less, or 36%; in the lower three quarters, about $300 less, or 15% to 22%. The authors note that part of the gap reflects higher-income renters living in more expensive neighborhoods, such as Manhattan, where the difference between stabilized and market rents is widest. (Rebecca Picciotto and Neil Mehta, A Surprising Portion of Rent-Stabilized Apartments Go to NYC’s Wealthiest Renters, Wall Street Journal, July 27, 2026.) ↩

  22. A review of 112 published empirical studies of rent control from 1967 to 2023 found that rent control generally raises rents for uncontrolled housing. The author explains that rent control worsens housing shortages, so would-be tenants who cannot find a controlled home turn to uncontrolled ones, driving up their rents. (Konstantin A. Kholodilin, Rent Control Effects through the Lens of Empirical Research: An Almost Complete Review of the Literature, Journal of Housing Economics 63 (2024): 101983, pp. 2, 5.) ↩

  23. In 2023, the median household income of rent-stabilized households was about $60,000, compared with about $91,000 for market-rate renters, and rent-stabilized tenants were more likely than market-rate renters to be Black or Hispanic. (Matthew Murphy et al., Understanding Different Segments of New York City’s Rent-Stabilized Housing Stock, NYU Furman Center, February 19, 2026.) ↩

  24. Because regulated rents rise more slowly than market rents, a tenant’s discount tends to grow the longer they stay, and it is largest where market rents are highest. An early study of New York City’s older rent-control system, using 1968 data, found that controlled rents fell with each additional year a tenant stayed, that benefits were largest in Manhattan, and that household income explained almost none of the variation in benefits. (Joseph Gyourko and Peter Linneman, Equity and Efficiency Aspects of Rent Control: An Empirical Study of New York City, Journal of Urban Economics 26, no. 1 (1989): 54–74.) A study of rent stabilization from 2002 to 2017 estimated an average discount of about $410 a month (34% of contract rent) and found that differences in discounts across racial groups were mainly explained by where tenants lived. (Ruoyu Chen et al., Measuring the Value of Rent Stabilization and Understanding Its Implications for Racial Inequality: Evidence from New York City, Regional Science and Urban Economics 103 (2023): 103948.) In 2023, part of the larger discounts for higher-income renters reflected their living in neighborhoods such as Manhattan, where median stabilized rents were about half of market rents, compared with 12% below market in the Bronx. (Rebecca Picciotto and Neil Mehta, A Surprising Portion of Rent-Stabilized Apartments Go to NYC’s Wealthiest Renters, Wall Street Journal, July 27, 2026.) ↩

  25. In a 2025 survey of New York City renters by a tenant-advocacy organization, low-income tenants reported similar levels of housing problems in regulated and market-rate apartments. Despite having similar levels of problems, 46% of regulated tenants had contacted the government for help getting repairs, compared with 33% of market-rate tenants. The authors attributed this difference to regulated tenants’ greater security of tenure. Market-rate tenants who sought help were more likely to report being threatened or harassed by their landlords. (Oksana Mironova, Housing Distress Is Widespread across NYC’s Rental Market—Rent Regulation Is Not to Blame, Community Service Society of New York, February 2026. The results are self-reported.) ↩

  26. Regarding supply: a study of 96 rent-control reforms adopted between 2000 and 2021 found that more restrictive reforms were associated with a 10% reduction in a city’s total rental units. The reforms increased the number of units affordable to extremely low-income households by about 52%, while reducing the number of units in the top rent tier—those priced for households earning more than 120% of area median income—by about 46%. (Christina Stacy et al., Rent Control and the Supply of Affordable Housing, Journal of Housing Economics 68 (2025): 102063.) ↩

  27. The standard economic critique of rent control, or any price control under normal market conditions, is that it distorts the balance of supply and demand, creating shortages by encouraging consumption while discouraging production. In rental housing, this means more people seeking rent-controlled homes than are available, while landlords have less incentive to build, maintain, or offer properties for rent. The Economists’ Views section in the appendix describes how this critique became close to a professional consensus in the twentieth century and how economists have since assessed newer, looser forms of rent control. ↩

  28. California’s Costa-Hawkins Rental Housing Act of 1995 bars local rent control on housing first occupied after February 1, 1995, and on single-family homes. Voters rejected a measure to repeal it in 2018. (Guy Marzorati, Proposition 10: Californians Reject Rent Control Measure, Statewide Limits to Remain, KQED, updated November 4, 2024.) In 2020, they rejected a measure to loosen it, which would have allowed local rent control on most housing more than 15 years old. (Alix Martichoux, Prop 21 Fails, Leaving California Rent Control Rules Unchanged, According to AP Projections, ABC7 San Francisco, November 4, 2020.) In 2024, they rejected another repeal measure. (California Voters Reject Proposition 33, Which Sought to Expand Rent Control, ABC7 San Francisco, November 6, 2024.) ↩

  29. A review of 112 published empirical studies of rent control from 1967 to 2023 found that nearly all published studies of housing quality concluded that rent control leads to deterioration of regulated housing; the two exceptions, both studies of moderate rent control in New Jersey, found no effect. Studies finding deterioration include ones on second-generation controls, which allow regular rent increases, such as Ontario’s controls and Germany’s 2015 rent brake. The author attributes the deterioration to landlords’ reduced incentive to invest in maintenance and refurbishment. (Konstantin A. Kholodilin, Rent Control Effects through the Lens of Empirical Research: An Almost Complete Review of the Literature, Journal of Housing Economics 63 (2024): 101983, pp. 2, 6, and table 2.) ↩

  30. The estimate divides the number of households receiving federal rental assistance by the number of very low-income renter households. (Maggie McCarty, Federal Rental Assistance and Affordability, IF12824, Congressional Research Service, updated August 13, 2026.) ↩

  31. In 2020, individual owners owned about 70% of U.S. rental properties but fewer than 40% of rental units. (Mark P. Keightley, Ownership of the U.S. Rental Housing Stock by Investor Type: In Brief, R47332, Congressional Research Service, December 13, 2022.) ↩

  32. For example, in a large sample of apartment buildings, property insurance rose about 75% after inflation from 2019 to 2024, with increases varying widely from one property to the next. Insurance costs rose from $39 to $68 per unit per month, in inflation-adjusted dollars, though by 2024 insurance was still only about 5% of revenue. Much of the variation in increases was local, differing between neighborhoods and between properties. Owners absorbed about three-quarters of the increase, and the rest appears to have been passed on mainly to existing tenants rather than new ones. (Samuel K. Hughes and Raven Molloy, Rising Property Insurance Costs and Pass-Through to Rents for Apartment Buildings, FEDS Notes, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, September 19, 2025. The sample consists of buildings with mortgages in commercial mortgage-backed securities (CMBS) pools, which tend to be larger, newer, and higher quality than apartment buildings overall.) ↩

  33. Qualifying improvements are building-wide, such as boilers, windows, wiring, plumbing, and roofs. The increase is temporary and must be removed from the rent 30 years after it takes effect, and the amount collected each year is capped at 2% of the tenant’s rent. (Apartment (IAI) and Building (MCI) Improvements, New York State Homes and Community Renewal, accessed October 23, 2026.) ↩

  34. The exemption applies to single-family homes and condominiums not owned by a real estate investment trust, a corporation, or a limited liability company with a corporate member, and only if the landlord gives the tenant written notice of the exemption. The law also exempts a duplex in which the owner lives in the other unit. (Cal. Civ. Code § 1947.12.) ↩

  35. Richard Arnott, Time for Revisionism on Rent Control?, Journal of Economic Perspectives 9, no. 1 (1995): 99–120. Arnott distinguished first-generation freezes from second-generation controls that allow regular increases. He later suggested “third-generation” for controls that apply only within a tenancy, though he preferred the term “tenancy rent control.” (Richard Arnott, Tenancy Rent Control, Swedish Economic Policy Review 10, no. 1 (2003): 92.) ↩

  36. A law review article supporting commercial rent control lists several differences between commercial and residential tenancies, among them that residential leases provide shelter, that commercial leases often run for many years rather than one, and that courts often treat commercial landlords and tenants as sophisticated parties with equal bargaining power. (Julian M. Hill, Commercial Rent Stabilization: One Local Response to Skyrocketing Rents, New York University Journal of Legislation and Public Policy 25, no. 3 (2023): 618–619.) ↩

  37. A 2023 history of U.S. commercial rent control lists no general commercial rent control law then in effect. (Julian M. Hill, Commercial Rent Stabilization: One Local Response to Skyrocketing Rents, New York University Journal of Legislation and Public Policy 25, no. 3 (2023): 619–623.) ↩

  38. YouGov surveyed 1,106 U.S. adult citizens online from January 14 to 16, 2026; the margin of error is ±3.8 points. Respondents were asked whether they supported or opposed “implementing rent regulations that limit how much landlords can raise rents” and “implementing rent controls that prohibit landlords from raising rents” in their local community. (YouGov Survey: Housing, topline and crosstab results, YouGov, accessed October 27, 2026, questions 32A and 32E.) ↩

  39. On the 2018 and 2020 measures and campaign spending: Abigail Nehring, Landlords Feel Relief as Voters Defeat Rent Control Again, Real Deal, November 11, 2024. On the certified 2024 result: November 5, 2024 Ballot Prop. 33, Institute of Governmental Studies, University of California, Berkeley, accessed October 27, 2026. ↩

  40. In the September survey of 1,071 likely voters, conducted August 29–September 9, 2024, 51% said they would vote yes. (PPIC Statewide Survey: Californians and Their Government, Public Policy Institute of California, September 18, 2024.) In the October survey of 1,137 likely voters, conducted October 7–15, 2024, 42% said they would vote yes and 54% no. (PPIC Statewide Survey: Californians and Their Government, Public Policy Institute of California, October 23, 2024.) ↩

  41. In San Francisco, tenants whose buildings came under rent control in 1994 were between 10% and 20% more likely than comparable uncovered tenants to remain at their address in the medium to long term. The effect was concentrated among older and longer-tenured tenants. (Rebecca Diamond et al., The Effects of Rent Control Expansion on Tenants, Landlords, and Inequality: Evidence from San Francisco, American Economic Review 109, no. 9 (2019): 3365–3394.) ↩

  42. A study of New York City compared which kinds of households occupied which sizes of apartments there and in cities without rent control. It estimated that about 21% of New York renters lived in apartments with more or fewer rooms than they would have rented in a free market. (Edward L. Glaeser and Erzo F. P. Luttmer, The Misallocation of Housing Under Rent Control, American Economic Review 93, no. 4 (2003): 1027–1046.) ↩

  43. When San Francisco extended rent control to small, older apartment buildings in 1994, covered tenants were more likely than comparable uncovered tenants to remain in the city years later, and the authors found that most tenants who stayed put because of rent control would otherwise have left San Francisco altogether. (Rebecca Diamond et al., The Effects of Rent Control Expansion on Tenants, Landlords, and Inequality: Evidence from San Francisco, American Economic Review 109, no. 9 (2019): 3365–3394.) ↩

  44. Milton Friedman and George J. Stigler, Roofs or Ceilings? The Current Housing Problem, Foundation for Economic Education, 1946. ↩

  45. In the 1990 survey, 76.3% generally agreed and 16.6% agreed, with provisos, that “a ceiling on rents reduces the quantity and quality of housing available.” (Blair Jenkins, Rent Control: Do Economists Agree?, Econ Journal Watch 6, no. 1 (2009): 73–112, reporting Richard M. Alston et al., Is There a Consensus among Economists in the 1990’s? American Economic Review 82, no. 2 (1992): 203–209.) In the 2012 poll, 33 of 41 disagreed that rent control had increased the amount and quality of broadly affordable rental housing, one agreed, three were uncertain, and the rest gave no opinion or did not answer. (Rent Control, poll of the US Economic Experts Panel, Kent A. Clark Center for Global Markets, University of Chicago Booth School of Business, February 7, 2012.) ↩

  46. Richard Arnott, Time for Revisionism on Rent Control?, Journal of Economic Perspectives 9, no. 1 (1995): 99–120. ↩

  47. Rebecca Diamond et al., The Effects of Rent Control Expansion on Tenants, Landlords, and Inequality: Evidence from San Francisco, American Economic Review 109, no. 9 (2019): 3365–3394. On gentrification: Rebecca Diamond et al., Who Benefits from Rent Control? Evidence from San Francisco, Microeconomic Insights, November 21, 2019. ↩

  48. David H. Autor et al., Housing Market Spillovers: Evidence from the End of Rent Control in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Journal of Political Economy 122, no. 3 (2014): 661–717. ↩

  49. Konstantin A. Kholodilin, Rent Control Effects through the Lens of Empirical Research: An Almost Complete Review of the Literature, Journal of Housing Economics 63 (2024): 101983. ↩

  50. Mark Paul et al., Tenant Protections for Enterprise-Backed Multifamily Properties Request for Input, comment letter to the Federal Housing Finance Agency, July 28, 2023. (Homes Guarantee Celebrates Tenant Movement Closing in on Federal Rent Regulation, press release, People’s Action, August 3, 2023.) ↩

  51. In a July 2024 poll of prominent economists, 28 of 41 respondents agreed that President Biden’s proposed 5% cap on annual rent increases would substantially reduce the number of apartments available for rent over the next ten years; 3 disagreed, and 10 were uncertain, several of whom said the cap might rarely apply. Only one agreed that the cap would make middle-income Americans substantially better off. (National Rent Caps, poll of the US Economic Experts Panel, Kent A. Clark Center for Global Markets, University of Chicago Booth School of Business, July 23, 2024.) ↩

  52. Richard Arnott, Time for Revisionism on Rent Control?, Journal of Economic Perspectives 9, no. 1 (1995): 99–120; Mark Paul, “Economists Are Rethinking Rent Control” in Our Homes, Our Future: Building the Power to Win Rent Control for Stable Communities, PolicyLink, July 2025. PolicyLink advocates for rent control. ↩

  53. Nationally, rent changes at lease renewal are often small or zero, while rents change much more when new tenants move in. (Brian Adams et al., Disentangling Rent Index Differences: Data, Methods, and Scope, Working Paper 22-38R, Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, September 28, 2023, p. 6. A revised version appeared in American Economic Review: Insights in 2024.) ↩

  54. A Statistics Canada study found that long-term tenants in Canada paid about 19% less than first-year tenants in 2021, after adjusting for dwelling and neighborhood characteristics. It attributed the gap mainly to landlords’ wish to avoid vacancies, avoid the cost of finding new tenants, and keep tenants they consider reliable, along with rent regulation in some provinces. (Samuel MacIsaac and David Wavrock, Renters’ Shelter Costs by Duration of Tenancy, Economic and Social Reports, Statistics Canada, August 27, 2025.) ↩

  55. The study’s authors summarize accusations that corporate landlords drive up rents, use aggressive eviction tactics, neglect maintenance, and discriminate in screening tenants. (Katharine W. H. Harwood et al., The Rise of Corporate Landlords: An Examination of Behavioral Differences in the Multifamily Market, Real Estate Economics, September 28, 2025.) For an example of tenants’ complaints about conditions and fees after corporate purchases: Mara Kardas-Nelson, Mold, Mice, and Unexpected Fees: Randolph Tenants Say Living Conditions Worsen under Corporate Landlords, Boston Globe, updated November 18, 2025. ↩

  56. Under the proposal, landlords with more than 50 units would have kept access to faster depreciation write-offs only if they held annual rent increases on existing units to 5% or less for two years. The White House said it would cover more than 20 million units; it exempted new construction and substantial renovation. (Fact Sheet: President Biden Announces Major New Actions to Lower Housing Costs by Limiting Rent Increases and Building More Homes, White House, July 16, 2024.) ↩

  57. The exemption applies to single-family homes and condominiums unless they are owned by a real estate investment trust, a corporation, or a limited liability company with a corporate member. (Cal. Civ. Code § 1947.12.) ↩

  58. When San Francisco adopted rent control in 1979, it exempted small multifamily buildings whose owners lived in them, on the grounds that these “mom and pop” landlords were less profit-driven than large corporate landlords and more similar to the tenants being protected. A 1994 ballot measure removed the exemption, in part because supporters argued that such buildings were increasingly owned by larger businesses. (Rebecca Diamond et al., The Effects of Rent Control Expansion on Tenants, Landlords, and Inequality: Evidence from San Francisco, American Economic Review 109, no. 9 (2019): 3365–3394.) ↩

  59. The study examined mergers among large investors in single-family rental homes and found moderate rent increases where the combined company owned more of a neighborhood’s rentals. (Umit G. Gurun et al., Do Wall Street Landlords Undermine Renters’ Welfare?, Review of Financial Studies 36, no. 1 (2023): 70–121.) ↩

  60. The study compared New York City apartment buildings and found that much of the raw gap between corporate and other owners disappeared once differences between their buildings were accounted for; the remaining difference did not depend on how many units the owner held. It measured asking rents for new tenants, not renewal increases. (Katharine W. H. Harwood et al., The Rise of Corporate Landlords: An Examination of Behavioral Differences in the Multifamily Market, Real Estate Economics, September 28, 2025.) ↩

  61. For example, in 2025 the Justice Department settled its antitrust case against RealPage, whose software recommends rents to landlords. The settlement bars the software from using competitors’ nonpublic, competitively sensitive information to set rental prices and limits its use of nonpublic data in training to data at least 12 months old. (Justice Department Requires RealPage to End the Sharing of Competitively Sensitive Information and Alignment of Pricing Among Competitors, press release 25-1111, U.S. Department of Justice, updated November 24, 2025.) ↩

  62. For example: Crystal Yormick, Advocates for Small Property Owners Push Back against Proposed Rent Control Ballot Measure, Greenfield Recorder, December 26, 2025. ↩

  63. Statement from Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins and Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie on Historic Affordable Housing Legislation, press release, New York State Assembly, June 11, 2019; Petition by Owner for High Income Rent Deregulation, 2019 Filing Period, Form RA-93 OPD, New York State Division of Housing and Community Renewal, December 2018, p. 1. ↩

  64. The 6,662 apartments are those recorded as deregulated under the provision; about 85% were in Manhattan. By comparison, at least 170,386 apartments left rent stabilization over the same period because their rent passed a threshold when they became vacant. (Changes to the Rent Stabilized Housing Stock in NYC in 2023, New York City Rent Guidelines Board, May 23, 2024, pp. 6, 13–14.) In 2023, about 960,600 apartments were rent-stabilized. (Rent Control FAQs, New York City Rent Guidelines Board, accessed October 24, 2026.) ↩

  65. Sophie House et al., Rent Regulation for the 21st Century: Pairing Anti-Gouging with Targeted Subsidies, policy brief, NYU Furman Center, April 21, 2021, pp. 4–5. ↩

  66. Sophie House et al., Rent Regulation for the 21st Century: Pairing Anti-Gouging with Targeted Subsidies, policy brief, NYU Furman Center, April 21, 2021, pp. 4–5. The authors recommend pairing broad caps that allow relatively large increases with subsidies targeted to low-income tenants. ↩

  67. For example, economist Gary Galles argues that ownership should give landlords the right to accept whatever rent tenants would willingly pay, and he calls rent control theft. (Gary Galles, Call Rent Control What It Really Is: Theft, Mises Wire, June 15, 2023.) ↩

  68. In Block v. Hirsh, the Court upheld a temporary rent control law in Washington, DC, by a 5–4 vote. (Block v. Hirsh, 256 U.S. 135, Supreme Court of the United States, April 18, 1921.) In Yee v. City of Escondido, the Court unanimously rejected mobile-home park owners’ claim that a rent control ordinance was a physical taking of their property. (Yee v. City of Escondido, 503 U.S. 519, Supreme Court of the United States, April 1, 1992.) ↩

  69. In February 2024, the Court declined to hear two challenges arguing that New York’s limits on regaining possession of apartments after a lease expires amounted to a physical taking. However, Justice Thomas called the constitutionality of regimes like New York’s “an important and pressing question” for an appropriate future case. (74 Pinehurst LLC v. New York, No. 22-1130, Supreme Court of the United States, February 20, 2024, statement of Thomas, J., respecting the denials of certiorari.) In November 2024, the Court declined two more challenges to the eviction rules in New York’s 2019 rent law, though Justice Gorsuch voted to hear them. (Ben Brachfeld, US Supreme Court Declines to Hear Challenges to NY Rent Stabilization Law, amNewYork, November 12, 2024.) ↩

  70. By statute, 31 states bar local rent control, but we exclude Oregon and Washington, which cap rent increases statewide. The remaining 29 include Indiana, Mississippi, and Utah, which permit local rent control only with the legislature’s approval. (Where Cities Can Set Rent Limits: The 50-State Rent Control Preemption Map (2026), Landlord Atlas, updated October 2, 2026.) ↩

  71. Bill Kozar, REALTORS® Can Still Join Call for Action against Rent Control Legislation, Illinois REALTORS, March 12, 2019. See also Rent Control Preemption Act, model policy, American Legislative Exchange Council, updated November 16, 2017. ↩

  72. On the campaign: Elizabeth Ross, Landlords in Mass. Fight Rent Control, Christian Science Monitor, November 29, 1993. On the vote: Simón Rios, Rent Control Supporters, Opponents Take Fight to Beacon Hill, WBUR, January 12, 2022. ↩

  73. For example, Boston Mayor Michelle Wu, a rent control supporter, said she would have preferred that a proposed Massachusetts ballot question simply lift the state’s ban and let each city decide, because conditions can differ greatly between municipalities. (Nik DeCosta-Klipa, What to Know about the Emerging 2026 Rent Control Ballot Question Fight in Massachusetts, WBUR, November 20, 2025.) ↩

  74. For example, Ohio’s 2022 law barring local rent control declares an adequate housing supply a matter of overriding statewide interest requiring a uniform approach, citing among other things the effect of housing scarcity on people seeking employment and on employers seeking employees. (Ohio Rev. Code § 5321.20.) ↩

  75. The estimates were $1.5 million a year for one option and $1 million for another. (Katelyn Vue, Minneapolis Staff Report Recommends against Rent Control, Warning It Could Cost the City Money and Hurt Housing Development, Sahan Journal, updated April 21, 2023.) ↩

  76. The measure, Proposition 10, would have repealed the state law limiting local rent control; voters rejected it. The quoted warning is from Jon Coupal of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, in the “Rebuttal to Argument in Favor of Proposition 10.” (Proposition 10: Arguments and Rebuttals, Official Voter Information Guide, California Secretary of State, 2018.) ↩

  77. The fee is for the 2026–2027 tax year. (The Rent Board Fee, San Francisco Rent Board, accessed October 27, 2026.) ↩