Old writing, relevant as ever
When the pandemic started, I was still living in Chicago and heavily engaged in housing organizing, specifically around rent control and tenant protections. It was apparent then that given everything, people not working and not making money, getting sick, that there would be massive problems with housing. I called my legislator and asked what they were going to do with housing. I’ll always remember that this particular legislator’s aide seemed so surprised at the question.
Later I got a milquetoast, non-committal response that they were “looking into solutions.”
There is massive capital and power invested in the housing market. Any effort to cut the ability for capital to squeeze every ounce of value from people, such as efforts for things like rent stabilization or rent control, will take an incredible amount of organizing and mobilizing of the people. Unified and organized, we can confront that power.
As such, wanted to share an old piece I wrote for the Chicago Tribune making the argument for rent control. (Shouldn’t be a surprise the the Tribune’s editorial board met this with a piece arguing for the exact opposite!) It feels as relevant as ever and I’m still proud of this one!
Link with full text below:
Chicago wants Rent Control — will our elected officials listen?
In the recent Chicago municipal election, 18 precincts included a referendum question on their ballots asking if the state of Illinois should support rent control. In all 18, voters said yes. In 2018, wards across Chicago were asked similar questions and overwhelmingly answered yes. The message is clear to our next mayor and City Council: Chicago wants rent control.
Rent control, also known as rent stabilization, increases housing tenure and stability. Simply put, it keeps people in their homes. Over half of Chicagoans are rent burdened, meaning they spend more than 30 percent of their income on rent. What’s more, displacement has become common in Chicago. Residents are forced out due to sudden, unexpected rent hikes, only to find luxury condos being built in place of their childhood homes.
As a member of the Lift the Ban Coalition, I am fighting for rent control policy. Rent control ties to inflation the amount rates can go up per lease cycle. It is not an overall cap or freeze, and landlords set rates and have mechanisms for increasing rent by waiver. What it does not allow is what we see over and over in this city: sharp, unjustifiable rental increases resulting in displacement.
In 1997, the American Legislative Exchange Council and the real estate industry spent a ton of money to help pass the Rent Control Preemption Act, which makes it illegal to pass any form of rent control in Illinois. Lift the Ban is currently pushing to reverse this bill and institute rent control policy.
The debate against rent control often focuses not on direct impacts on tenants, but on potential indirect effects or unintended consequences. The real estate industry has spent years, and millions of dollars, influencing this debate. Unsurprisingly, it has already begun in earnest here.
One of the most prevalent arguments against is that rent control may hurt new construction and supply. Yet, two of New York City’s greatest housing construction booms in the 20th century occurred during periods when strict rent control policies were in effect. The first was from 1921 through 1928, when more than 665,000 units were added, and again from 1947 through 1965, when more than 676,000 units were added. A change in the city’s zoning laws caused a sharp decline in new construction in the late 1960s.
Additionally, the opposition often states that economists are uniformly against rent control. This view seems to stem from a survey in which economists were asked, among other things, if they agreed that a ceiling on rent reduces housing supply. Of those who responded, 77 percent stated they generally agreed. Yet, while the same in name, rent control of old is not the rent control that Lift the Ban Coalition is fighting for now. Today’s rent control is not about imposing an overall price ceiling.
If we are talking about economic theory and potential results, economist Gary Painter points out an equally valid theory that in rental markets where developers and landlords have market power, rent control can increase supply. If housing developers cannot generate extra profit through rent increases, it creates an incentive to build more units. In fact, evidence suggests this is currently the case in California where overall production is low, but cities with rental protections are building more apartments than those without.
The opposition also argues that we don’t need rent control, we just need more affordable housing. Hey, no argument here. Let’s work together to make this happen, on top of protections for renters.
There are plenty of landlords who already informally follow a rent control policy by simply not raising rents unfairly. For those who don’t, who target neighborhoods as playgrounds for investment by buying up homes and pricing families out in order to build luxury condos, any curb on this ability to dominate the market is predictably unwelcome. But exploitative consumer practices like this should be illegal for any place concerned with engendering equity, which is the kind of Chicago I want to live in.
Chicagoans sent a clear message Feb. 26 and in 2018: We want rent control, and we want it now. The question is, will the politicians we elected to serve us, including our next mayor, listen to their constituents?
