Rental prices have hit historic highs, straining household finances, especially among low-income people. Tenant activists and some local policymakers have proposed reviving the failed retro idea of rent control as a solution despite many states outlawing it. Setting limits on rental prices or the rate of rent increases distorts the rental housing market to the harm of most renters. When rent control was imposed, it benefitted a few residents—some of whom were wealthy, not poor—at the cost of shrinking the supply of rental units for everyone else as well as other counterproductive outcomes.
Economy