Rational Eviction: How Landlords Use Evictions in Response to Rent Control
5th November 2022
Rent control policies seek to ensure affordable and stable housing for current ten- ants; however, they also increase the incentive for landlords to evict tenants since rents re-set when tenants leave.
“Rent control”, a classic political intervention in economic markets, suffers from the same wage-and-price-control defects as other attempts to fit economic reality into political fantasy. Markets work, whether you want them to or not. When prices are fixed, markets respond in two ways: rationing, in which there are more willing buyers than willing sellers, so transactions depend on favoritism (typically political) or wait-lists; and “black markets”, a smear coined by statists who are mortally offended by the fact that people will trade in ways of which the Ruling Class do not approve. “When trade is criminalized, only criminals will trade”: Prohibition gave us organized crime, the War on Drugs gave us the Mexican cartels, and Democrats gave us the corrupt urban political machine that is the distinguishing characteristic of modern city living.