Economists discuss Prop. 10 Might Harm Low-Income Families in Long Term

Not Rent Control. Try Affordable Housing,

Housing is a hot topic in California. Prop. 10 aims to impose rent control helping the low-income families. However, Economists explains rent control would actually harm low-income families with the following reasons:

1) Increasing search cost: fewer rental units will be available in the market as landlords do not think it is profitable to rent their units anymore.

2) Decreasing the apartment quality: Landowners do not care, because they are not receiving any higher rent if they make the apartments pretty. Renters are on their own!

3) Lots of families will be misplaced from the city: When the landowners now have a choice to rent to either the tech engineers or the working class, whom do you think the landowner would sign the leasing with?

4) Transferring original rent to other costs: For example, searching cost, housing quality.

Rent Control will trigger re-location and further income segregation because the high-paid educated renters would likely have more information/ access to get the apartments not the low-income families. Landowners can now put preference to renters.

Who is going to win this rent control game? Low-income or high-income renters?

Prop. 10 has a good intention to help with low-income families who are struggling with the sky-high rent in California, but building affordable housing is a better method to solve the housing problem for low-income families. Tune in for the affordable housing construction in California!