This afternoon the Washington Post reported that President Biden will tomorrow announce a new proposal to cap rents nationally. This campaign season rhetoric will do nothing to lower housing costs or broaden housing opportunity. Indeed, instituting national rent control will drive up housing costs and limit the building of new and badly needed housing at the same time communities across the nation are facing a housing affordability crisis.
“This legislative proposal will not create a single new unit while raising costs on the very residents it purports to help,” said NMHC President Sharon Wilson Géno. “If the administration’s goal is to lower housing costs and support residents it would be better advised to implement policies that expand housing supply - the only real way to sustainably lower housing costs and create more housing security for renters as the Biden administration pointed out in its very own Housing Supply Action Plan. Rent control has been tried for decades and been a resounding failure. Now is the time for actual solutions, not electioneering.”
Decades of academic research from across the United States and around the world clearly show that rent caps – more commonly known as rent control – reduce the supply of available housing and fail to target those renters who need help the most while simultaneously harming other residents and the communities they reside in. Rent control has also been proven to reduce the quality of housing.
As Jason Furman, a top economist in the Obama administration and now a professor at Harvard University said in the Washington Post article:
“Rent control has been about as disgraced as any economic policy in the tool kit. The idea we’d be reviving and expanding it will ultimately make our housing supply problems worse, not better.”
Going forward, NMHC and our members will strongly oppose this federal rent control while offering real solutions to increase housing supply, broaden opportunity and lower housing costs.
Based in Washington, D.C., the National Multifamily Housing Council (NMHC) is where rental housers and suppliers come together to help meet America’s housing needs by creating inclusive and resilient communities where people build their lives. We bring together the owners, managers, developers and suppliers who provide rental homes for 40 million Americans from every walk of life—including seniors, teachers, firefighters, healthcare workers, families with children and many others. NMHC provides a forum for leadership and advocacy that promotes thriving rental housing communities for all. For more information, contact NMHC at 202/974-2300, e-mail the Council at info@nmhc.org, or visit NMHC's website at nmhc.org.
