Perhaps the most striking effect of rent control is the long-term decline in
the amount and quality of rental housing.
Ryan McGinnis/Alamy Stock Photo
The other important group of people who suffer from rent controls are
potential future tenants. The housing shortage will hurt some of them
because the rental housing they will require will not exist in the future.
These people, who wind up living farther from their places of
employment or in apartments otherwise inappropriate to their situations,
are invisible in debates over rent control because they cannot obtain
housing in the rent-controlled jurisdiction. Thus, rent control is often
stable politically even when it causes a long-run housing shortage. The
current tenants benefit, and they outnumber the current landlords, while
the potential tenants, who are harmed, are nowhere to be seen or heard.