Rent Control/Life Control (Choose Any Two)

Officials often impose rent control in one form or another at the behest of cries against the "evil capitalists" or "idle, rich landlords". The ostensible purpose of these rent controls is to bring down rent prices, thereby making housing affordable for the working class. However, a close inspection of the issue reveals two main arguments against the imposition of rent control: practical and moral.

Practically speaking, rent control actually works to harm everyone involved in the business of housing, and that includes the low-income tenants it is supposed to help. If rent control is enacted, there are several unintended consequences that may result.

First, rent control may drive landlords out of the housing market. According to the laws of supply and demand, a price ceiling will drive supply down and demand up. This will mean an excess of demand within the housing market and therefore mean a larger proportion of the low-income population becoming homeless. In an attempt to help low-income people obtain places to live, the officials who impose rent control do away with the possibility of simply a slightly more expensive dwelling and end up with no possibilities at all.

In addition to this, the quality of apartments that are available is driven down because the amount of demand means that landlords are able to pick and choose tenants based on how bad of living conditions they are willing to endure. Because rent control destroys the landlord's ability to reap the benefits of a higher-yield investment, the landlord then has no incentive to maintain the property he rents out to as high a standard as he would without controls. What would have been higher-quality housing is now deteriorating and dilapidated, once again hurting those the rent control was intended to help. To add insult to injury, regulation on the quality of housing may be initiated in addition to the rent control once the above situation takes place, and that will mean higher costs of maintenance with lower results. These regulations, in conjunction with rent controls, drive out more suppliers and aggravate the problem.

In another possibility, the landlord may decide to sell his property instead of renting it. Rent control is often enacted under the assumption that landlords do not work for the rent they collect, which is the truth, but not the whole truth. The whole truth is that the landlord, by renting out his property, has chosen to forgo a low payoff now in favor of a much higher overall payoff down the road. If rent control is enacted, the landlord may decide that the payoff later on is enough to justify the wait. Then the property is sold instead of rented out, and because most low-income tenants rent specifically because they cannot afford to buy, they are either left without a place to live or with a place of much lower quality than they would originally be able to afford.

In addition to the practical concerns raised by rent control, there are also significant moral questions to ask when advocating rent control. The foundation of a free and just society is based on the security of one's life, liberty, and property; these being individual rights and not collective rights, no one, even by majority vote, has a right to take these away. However, that is exactly what rent control does. Rent control takes away a landlord's liberty to do what he pleases with his property, for if someone else can tell a property owner what he can or cannot do with that property, is it really his? Therefore, as rent control takes away the landlord's rights of liberty and property, it can within reason be considered slavery and theft. If a person changes his path in life because he does not want to be involved in slavery and theft in the housing market, then rent control further leads to control of one's life, completing the circle of the violation of rights.

Rent control is impractical and immoral. It harms everyone involved with the process of providing housing, including the people it is supposed to help. A true advocate of economic prosperity and freedom should therefore argue forcefully against the destructive and unethical burden of rent control.