The Rent Freeze, and a Return to the 1970s

- The article discusses a local political controversy in Berkeley, California, where a city council candidate proposed freezing rents at their 2024 levels for the next four years. This has sparked debate about whether such policies help or harm renters in the long run. - Rent control and rent freezes are highly contentious in economics: proponents say they protect tenants from displacement; critics argue they discourage new housing construction, reduce housing supply, and benefit mostly current renters at the expense of future ones. - The article references a famous 1970s-era study by economists Cheung and Bignon that analyzed rent control in Hong Kong, drawing parallels to Berkeley today. The 1970s context matters because that decade saw multiple US cities adopt rent control, followed by a wave of economic research showing unintended negative consequences. - The piece is written for a Substack audience familiar with urban policy debates and uses the Berkeley case to argue that well-intentioned rent freezes can backfire by worsening the very housing shortage they aim to address.