This is the main difference in politics, as far as I can tell: Some people push for things that seem really compassionate and intuitively good and right, but actually make the problem a lot worse. But to argue this is almost always futile because all most people seem able to absorb is that you're disagreeing with their intuitively compassionate position, not that you're trying to posit a solution that actually functions, so in their eyes you're an existential threat to them.

> The 2020 Rental Law ... mandated three-year lease terms and required rent to be paid in pesos—a currency rapidly losing value due to rampant inflation.

> Faced with inflation and rigid restrictions, landlords were hesitant to sign long-term leases. Many either set excessively high rents to hedge against future inflation or withdrew their properties from the rental market altogether. Others opted to sell in U.S. dollars or list them on short-term rental platforms like Airbnb, where they could charge in foreign currencies.

With rent control, it seems to be it mostly (always?) seems to be implemented in a binary fashion: a geographic area tends to have most (all?) units controlled or not. When it is removed, then folks can be grandfathered in, so anyone who stays put is fine, but once a unit becomes vacant the unit becomes uncontrolled.

I'd be curious to see a 'sliding scale' implementation:

* all newly built units are uncontrolled

* all units that are 5-10 years old have a maximum rental increase of 3xCPI

* all units that are 10-15 years old have a maximum rental increase of 2xCPI

* units >15 years old are rent controlled (~CPI increases)

Is anyone aware of jurisdiction(s) that have done such a thing?

If you have a law that stops certain kinds of private agreements, and then you repeal this law, it is logical to see those kinds of private agreements increase.

Like many policies on the left, it’s easier to go with the vibes than actually look at the results and see if it’s a good idea. Rent control never works. It has been played out on every continent save Antarctica and it always leads to worse outcomes.

I'd like to point out this is propaganda. The only source is actually a report[1] from January this year, that's where the line, "Buenos Aires saw a doubling of available rental units, and rental prices have stabilized" comes from. It took me a lot of time to find it a month or so ago when the Libertarians on Reddit were running victory laps after it got picked up by AR15.com's forum[2] early August.

[1] https://www.eleconomista.es/economia/noticias/12935188/08/24...

[2] https://www.ar15.com/forums/General/Milei-ends-rent-control-...

Seems clear rent controls don't work in a hyper inflating economy where land lords can't lockin rent for multiple years because 3 years down the road, tenants are paying price of bread for rent. The core problem is the hyper inflation, not the rent control, which under "normal" performing economic conditions will not trigger same set of behaviors, or at least the costs/benefits are not this obvious.

Freakonomics had an episode on rent control a few years ago that I found interesting.

https://freakonomics.com/podcast/why-rent-control-doesnt-wor...

@dang - looks like this article has been flagged tactically for ideological reasons. Can you please restore it to view?

As someone who signed contract to rent recently, "rent falling" is beyond bullshit. Listing increase is true, doesn't mean they're "good" listings though.

I would be cautious about using San Francisco about an example where things could be improved by repealing rent control.

The tl;dr of this article is this line - it increased supply:

> But after the repeal, Buenos Aires saw a doubling of available rental units, and rental prices have stabilized.

That would not happen in SF.

One issue is rent control. Another, separate, issue is housing/rental supply.

Getting apartments built in SF is notoriously difficult. It's not realistic to think you can double the supply of available rental units here imho.

That is a political ask that people have been trying to do for ages, and which other people, homeowners, have been successfully blocking for the same amount of time. While there's an ongoing effort to push against that, I would expect the blocking to continue, successfully as it has been until now.

the description of the previous (bad) law as 'rent control' represents malicious disregard for the truth. 'rent control' idiomatically means, in english, limitations on raising rents over the entire period of time a tenant inhabits a property, not over the predetermined term of a lease. the wikipedia article explains:

> The loose term "rent control" covers a spectrum of regulation which can vary from setting the absolute amount of rent that can be charged, with no allowed increases, to placing different limits on the amount that rent can increase; these restrictions may continue between tenancies, or may be applied only within the duration of a tenancy.

argentina has never, to my knowledge, had rent control in any of these senses. when the lease expired, after three years (or previously two) there was no restriction on how much the landlord could demand in rent to sign a new lease. commonly it would be several times the old rent, due to inflation. three years ago the dollar was 184 pesos https://dolarhistorico.com/cotizacion-dolar-blue/mes/septiem... so a 250 dollar rent would have been 46000 pesos. now it's 1230 pesos https://dolarhistorico.com/cotizacion-dolar-blue/mes/agosto-... so those 46000 pesos would be worth 37 dollars without the yearly inflation adjustment

the text of the article sort of admits this by omission, while implying the contrary through its dishonest choice of wording. this is in sharp contrast to the integrity and reliability i normally expect from reason—i often disagree with their values but rarely with their facts

this has misled commenters here such as https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41659436

Argentina never had rent control. Rent control keeps rents low for indefinite periods of time. Argentina simply mandated 3 year leases.

People respond to incentives. If gas was mandated at 25 cents a gallon every station would be empty.

In other news, dollar is cheaper than it was in February, national oil company just announced that the gas prices will be going down, and dollar deposits in banks have also gone up 40%.

*

or, you know, it's irrelevant as rent fall because nobody have money and listing increase because everyone is leaving.

We, in the US, have a housing affordability crisis. Therea re a number of causes for this:

1. Cities are reaching the limit they can sprawl while still effectively being the same city. Atlanta springs to mind;

2. People vote for politicians who restrict supply to increase the value of something they see as an asset rather than something simply to provide shelter; Increasing house prices are simply stealing from the next generation. That's all. Minimum lot sizes, SFH only zoning, bans on MDU/ADUs, etc all exist solely to increase house prices;

3. Politicians only ever tackle the problem from the demand side eg mortgage interest tax deductions, first home owner grants. All this does is increase the prices by the induced demand. It's a wealth transfer to the existing homeowners.

4. Landlords. In an ideal world, they wouldn't exist. This almost happened in the UK and it was surprisingly simple [1]. They are quite literally and figuratively rent-seekers.

The YIMBYs will tell you "build! build! build!". This is overly simplistic. It also depends on what you build. Look at Manhattan that is building ultra-luxury skyscrapers. There is no trickle down effect here. It's simply money laundering and parking capital.

What we need is a healthy supply of quality, affordable housing. We simply won't get that relying on private landlords. The only solution to thisis so-called "social housing". That is, government owned and supplied housing. Vienna is a prime example here where over 60% of the housing is social housing. Americans will tend to immediately rject this as "projects" or "ghettoes" (or, worse, "socialism").

Housing unaffordability is the number one factor leading to houselessness. It's not even close.

Denying people shelter is, quite literally, state violence. It is causing direct and immediate harm for the sake of wealth accumulation by a few.

So where does rent control fit in all this? It can be a short-term aid at stabilizing prices but it is not a long-term solution. It tends to make it impossible for people to move. Landlords will resort to unethical or even illegal tactics to force out tenants so they can relist at market rates. Or they'll leave units vacant (IIRC there are 100K+ purposefully vacant units in Mnahattan).

Pretty much our entire society is designed to extract wealth from the poorest through rent, student debt, housing debt, medical debt, vehicle debt and maintenance (because in 99% of the US you cannot exist without a car).

Billionaires spend big to block public transit [2]. Why do you think that is?

[1]: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2024/mar/19/end-of-...

[2]: https://archive.is/UFujh

[dead]

[dead]

Sadly, these results are going to be ignored by those in favor of rent controls —of course these same people will cite any undergrad study results to support whatever policy they agree with. Hard numbers? No way.

Kamala is talking about grocery price controls (and calls it gauging laws). However, this is a dubious proposition given that the grocery retail industry is notorious for slim margins 1 - 1.5% profit margins. Like what the hell is this going to accomplish, other than create shortages in some areas?

It’s dumb. I don’t know who in hell is giving her economic advice, but they need to fire whoever the hell he or she is.

Argentina is in a deep recession right now. People having no money can make rents fall as well.