Rent Control: Pros and Cons

Evaluate the pros and cons of rent control and rent stabilization in NYC.

Rent control is the government imposition of price ceilings on rent for apartments in certain areas of a city. The goal is usually to protect the rights of the poor. Thus, in a rent controlled or rent stabilized building, the amount of rent will not increase as quickly as inflation. While the moral side of rent control may have some appeal, in the long run the disadvantages far outweigh the advantages. Those who argue in favor of rent control say that it is the only way to protect lower-income tenants from landlords who overprice, and from being forced to move out of a neighborhood because they cannot afford the rent. Limiting the price …show more content…

The "places" approach focuses on improving the quality of a place, in the hope that the people who live there will benefit from the change. In my opinion, both of the approaches have drawbacks, and a mixture of the two is the best way to solve the problems of local economic development.

The people approach, based on making individuals more prosperous, is based on the rationale that only people matter. Those who support it argue that if you improve the lives of people, it doesn't matter where they live. Thus, they would argue for job training programs and not for strategies that would try to bring factories into a certain city.

One of the main negative effects of the people centered approach is that it encourages migration. This is a disadvantage in the big picture for three reasons. First, migration away from problem areas of the most qualified only worsens the situation of those areas. If a city spends money on training people to become more efficient and better skilled workers, and those people then move on to find better job opportunities, then that city hasn't succeeded in its primary goal: to improve the quality of life in its borders. In the end, the skill level of the local population doesn't improve, in fact, it may decrease.

Another disadvantage of migration is the fact that it leads to the disintegration of families and communities. When it becomes easy for people to move from one