Bizuayehu Tesfaye/Las Vegas Review-Journal
When I saw President Joe Biden calling for rent control, I felt really sad for the community I moved to to escape these types of failed policies.
I lived in and around New York City for several years in the 1960s and 1970s. Rent control was a huge part of life in the Big Apple. Housing was very expensive in the city because demand was always greater than supply. If you were lucky enough to find a rent-controlled unit, you sacrificed other things to get it.
Rent control dictated personal decisions about where to work, shop, or go to school. I saw people forgo promotions or new jobs because they didn’t want to move from their rent-controlled apartment to another community. Who knew being a slave to rent could be so crippling? The “golden handcuff” effect of tenants forgoing better opportunities and life choices because they refused to give up their rent-controlled home was deeply ingrained. It remains in effect everywhere rent control is enforced.
Furthermore, there was always something inherently unfair about rent control in New York City. We were grateful to be able to have this very affordable housing. We were working-class people and we needed to be able to live in the city. However, this led to very glaring disparities in our neighborhood, where very wealthy people lived in rent-controlled units and paid a nominal rent. Our neighbor, a former governor and one of the richest men in the state, lived in a rent-controlled building. Tenants were also allowed to pass their rent on to a family member. Even today, many of these rent-controlled buildings are filled with multi-generational family tenants.
We decided that the only way to find an affordable home, make sensible lifestyle choices, and get rid of rent control was to move to the vast southwest corner of the country. Our decision was based on a basic supply and demand equation. There was more land to build more houses, condos, and apartments in Nevada and Arizona. The housing markets naturally incentivized developers to build more. Developers and apartment owners were incentivized to build more because there were no artificial restrictions on what could be charged and what tenants would pay. Options abounded.
An excellent article from Forbes highlights a study on the negative effects of rent control across the country. It points out what many other studies show: rent control leads to housing shortages, less investment by landlords in property maintenance, and fewer housing options for people. These are all things I witnessed firsthand while living in New York.
It seems like Southern Nevada is now flirting with the idea of rent control. It’s a big mistake. Over the years, many of us have come to this area because of the wide variety of affordable housing options. We still have land, especially if the federal government would return more federally owned land to state or local governments to build affordable housing units. We could also build a little more without creating high-density problems.
A state or county measure to create rent control should not even be considered. There are alternatives to make rents affordable and ensure that we have a market that incentivizes the continued addition of more units as they are needed.
We have seen the real problems of rent control in our lifetime. We came to the wonderful Las Vegas Valley with the expectation that those mistakes would not be repeated. We need to do everything we can to make sure they don’t.
Ruth Madison is a former New York resident now living in Las Vegas.
