Matt Mahan

Right.

I think the research on this is fairly clear.

If you expand rent control in the short run, the people who are now covered by rent control are less likely to be displaced.

So there's this narrow short-term goal that matters.

People are scared of displacement for good reason.

Cost of housing, cost of rent is going up faster than many people's incomes.

That's a legitimate problem.

Now, there's not only one way to solve it.

One proposal is rent control.

There's also building more housing supply.

We've just seen yet again in the city of Austin that as they expanded housing supply and built a lot and they build more affordably, rents have come down dramatically.

So the market can work.

But setting that aside for a moment, when you impose rent control and expand it, you have the

say, social benefit of fewer people being displaced because the rents go up more slowly and are more manageable based on their incomes.

You have this long-term problem though that's even more significant and is the reason that I don't support expanding rent control in California.

which is the market reacts by taking more units out of the rental stock, doesn't maintain, owners stop maintaining their properties because they can't charge the rent that is required to pay for the maintenance.

And worst of all, the market underproduces, builds less.

because there's less expected return on the other side.

So people won't, it'll be very hard, becomes harder to get financing to build more units.

And over time, it's a race to the bottom in that that declining supply relative to population and job growth