Rent control is in the news, as it looks like Oregon will enact it statewide. AP reports that the state Senate has passed the legislation, and

Gov. Kate Brown told reporters she expected the full House to approve the measure. “I look forward to signing the bill,” said Brown, a Democrat.

We wrote about rent control in a 2016 report, including its history and the reasons it is bad policy. (For example, it discourages construction of new rentals and maintenance of old rentals, encourages conversions from rentals to owner-occupied housing, and reduces tenant mobility.)

A December 2018 working paper from a group of Stanford economists looks at San Francisco’s rent control law and finds that landlords responded by reducing rental supply by 15 percent, which “likely increased rents in the long run, leading to a transfer between future San Francisco renters and renters living in San Francisco in 1994.” It also finds that rent control actually contributed to gentrification and increased income inequality.

Rent control is banned in Washington (RCW 35.21.830), but there are periodically calls to change that law so that cities experiencing high rents could act to control them. For example, the Seattle City Council’s proposed 2019 work program (which is on the agenda for Monday’s council meeting) includes a section on rent control. The Human Services, Equitable Development and Renter Rights Committee proposes that it “monitor statewide efforts to repeal the Washington State prohibition on rent control” and “consider rent control legislation as permitted by state law.”

In our 2016 report, we wrote about why it is appropriate for the state to preempt cities on this issue:

Edward Glaeser notes that the majority of states have laws, like Washington’s, precluding local governments from enacting rent control and that an “economic explanation for this state intervention is that rent control imposes costs on people outside the jurisdiction.” Glaeser specifically identifies the impact on people “who might want to move to the community but are prevented by the lack of supply of available housing.”

Similarly, the December 2018 working paper notes,

Since incumbent renters are made better off, it is not surprising that popular votes to expand rent control often pass in cities with high renter populations. The beneficiaries are the ones who are able to vote, while future renters who pay the costs of rent control do not get a say in these elections. Local popular votes thus appear to be an inefficient way to set rent control policies.

It’s surprising that in Oregon’s case, a state legislature is the voting body involved in adopting rent control.