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Biden's rent-control plan will only make America’s housing crisis worse
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President Joe Biden is suggesting that a federal limit on annual rent increases in residential units will ease housing costs. This is what happens when economist Milton Friedman isn’t “running the show”: Policymakers follow ideas that make the problem they say they’re solving infinitely worse.
“While the prior administration gave special tax breaks to corporate landlords, I’m working to lower housing costs for families,” Biden said Tuesday. He urged congressional Republicans to “join Democrats to pass my plan to lower housing costs for Americans,” in which corporate owners would have “a choice to either cap rent increases on existing units at 5% or risk losing current valuable federal tax breaks.”
If he had only looked west, he would have seen the damage caused by rent-control policies in California.
BIDEN UNVEILS PLAN TO CAP NATIONAL RENT INCREASES AT 5%
California is one of the most rent-controlled states in the country. Even though more than a dozen cities have some type of law that limits how much owners can increase rental rates, it is going through a resurgence of anti-landlord rules, which is sure to spike even higher if voters approve a measure on the November ballot that repeals state limits on rent control.
President Joe Biden proposed national rent control, which has already failed locally, especially in California. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)
While common sense tells us that rent control laws are counterproductive, it’s clear that lawmakers often miss the obvious. For those, and for the activists who believe rent ceilings are beneficial, we have data.
For instance, a 2019 study by the American Economic Association found that San Francisco landlords “treated by rent control” reduced “rental housing supplies by 15% by selling to owner-occupants and redeveloping buildings,” which “likely drove up market rents in the long run, ultimately undermining the goals of” the city’s 1994 ballot initiative.
The authors noted that “a substantial body of economic research has warned about potential negative efficiency consequences of limiting rent increases below market rates.” Those consequences include the “overconsumption of housing by tenants of rent-controlled apartments”; the misallocation of housing; “negative spillovers onto neighboring housing” that lower “the amenity value of these neighborhoods and mak(e) them less desirable places to live”; and “neglect of required maintenance” – because who’s going to pour money into an asset when the law cuts into the return on that investment?
Rent control in Berkeley in the late 1970s created a large-scale dislocation because “a large number of University of California-Berkeley students simply stayed in their apartments long after graduation,” says economics professor William L. Anderson. The result was a “massive shortage of housing for new students, who then had to look for housing in nearby cities like Oakland.”
A two-decade study by California State University, Sacramento and the Sacramento Regional Research Institute discovered that rent control laws in Berkeley and Santa Monica reduced the supply of rental housing by nearly 7.5% in the former and more than 8.7% in the latter.
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Over that period, the number of college-age students living in Berkeley fell by almost 11%, while in Santa Monica, “formerly a haven for UCLA students,” the college-age student population dropped more than 50%.
In California’s biggest city, rent control has so skewed the housing market that property owners are offering tenants large sums of money, in some cases as high as six figures, as an incentive to move out. The hardship of rent control is forcing owners to make difficult decisions about their properties. Sometimes, the only options are demolishing their units and using the real estate for other purposes because they cannot afford to continue leasing their property.
While common sense tells us that rent control laws are counterproductive, it’s clear that lawmakers often miss the obvious. For those, and for the activists who believe rent ceilings are beneficial, we have data.
Even the state’s own nonpartisan fiscal and policy adviser has warned lawmakers of the negative consequences of rent control. In a 2016 report, the Legislative Analyst’s Office said rent-control laws fail to “increase the supply of housing and, in fact, likely would discourage new construction,” which is perpetually needed in California to drive housing down to more affordable prices.
During the 2020 presidential campaign, Biden said “Milton Friedman isn’t running the show anymore,” in an interview in which he said the next federal pandemic stimulus needed to be “a hell of a lot bigger” than the $2 trillion CARES Act that had just passed.
Friedman was a brilliant economist who would have bristled at the ease in which today’s lawmakers spend other people’s money. But he never ran whatever show Biden had in mind, though he did, as economist Stephen Moore has said, have “a profound impact on major policy decisions.” Biden would be wise to follow the advice that Friedman freely gave during his life, but he instead has chosen to take California foolishness national.
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ST. GEORGE, Utah (ABC4) — A Utah father has been arrested for allegedly sexually abusing and raping his juvenile daughter in their home.
The 55-year-old man, who ABC4.com is not naming to protect the identity of the victim, has been arrested on 11 counts of sodomy on a child (first-degree felony), six counts of rape of a child (first-degree felony), three counts of aggravated sexual abuse of a child (first-degree felony), and one count of rape of a child (first-degree felony),
According to court documents, on May 5, officers with the St. George Police Department received a Division of Child and Family Services referral regarding a sex offense. The referral claimed that the 55-year-old man was sexually abusing his juvenile daughter in their home.
The victim was taken to the Children’s Justice Center for a forensic interview. She reported that her father would perform sexual acts on her, as well as force her to perform sexual acts on him.
During an interview with police, the father admitted to sexually abusing and raping his juvenile daughter. He was then arrested and transported to the Washington County Jail where he is being held without bail.
Charges are allegations only. All arrested persons are presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.
The Washington Nationals recalled right-handed pitcher Zak Kent from Triple-A Rochester on Wednesday and optioned right-handed pitcher Andre Granillo to Triple-A Rochester on Tuesday. Nationals President of Baseball Operations Paul Toboni made the announcements.
Kent, 28, joins the Nationals after he was claimed off waivers from the Minnesota Twins on
Kent, 28, joins the Nationals after he was claimed off waivers from the Minnesota Twins on
A father-and-son duo of Blackfeet artists are visiting Riverton and Jackson this week to share their unique takes on ledger art. The events are part of Central Wyoming College’s week-long Native Voices celebration.
Terrance Guardipee and Terran Last Gun will share their work and perspectives during “Behind Linear Narratives: Indigenous Plains Ledger Art,” at the Intertribal Center at CWC’s Riverton campus on May 6 starting at 5:30 p.m.
The two also have an exhibition opening at the Jackson Hole History Museum on May 7, which will be part of an art walk featuring Native artists and Indigenous-inspired food tastings taking place that same evening.
Plains Indian communities lost one of their main canvases when the U.S. government and white settlers started eradicating bison in the mid-1800s. That’s how ledger art was born: Instead of documenting significant events on hides, people would find ways to acquire and draw on filled-out accounting books as a way to keep telling their stories.
Terrance Guardipee
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Central Wyoming College
Terrance Guardipee was introduced to the visual storytelling style by his mentor George Flett in the late 1990s. Flett gave Guardipee eight sheets of ledger paper to try it out.
“ He was a huge influence on me and guided me through my art career,” said Guardipee. “I went to the Institute of American Indian Arts and so did he. We had that connection.”
Flett, Guardipee and a collection of other artists worked together to revitalize and elevate the art form, and eventually succeeded in getting it recognized as its own competitive category at the Sante Fe Indian Market in 2009.
“ All of us had our own role in what we were doing and none of us looked the same,” he said. “Our art didn’t look the same. We were all individual people.”
Over time, Guardipee developed his own unique ledger art style, moving from a more traditional single-page approach to mixed-media collages that include old documents and antique maps – the more coffee-stained and marked-up, the better.
“ I grabbed stock certificates, checks, receipts, music paper, anything I thought my ancestors, if they came across it and they were doing this kind of work, they would’ve used,” he said. “ Each document wasn’t just a random document to me. They all went with the piece.”
The art form, in its many different iterations, has now grown far beyond its Plains roots, expanding all over Indian Country and among women artists, according to Guardipee. But he said his advice to people curious about the form is to create from their own cultural experiences, rather than replicate the symbols or imagery used by other artists.
Terran Last Gun
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Central Wyoming College
“ Get maps of where you’re from. That’s your homeland. Your ancestors are there,” he said. “Their blood’s been there [for] thousands of years. Draw on those. Represents where you’re from.”
Guardipee’s son, Terran Last Gun, is an acclaimed visual artist in his own right and also attended the Institute of American Indian Arts in Sante Fe, New Mexico. He took up a version of ledger art, but with his own more contemporary twist grounded in geometric shapes and bright colors.
Terrance Guardipee
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“ Our ancestors evolved. We evolve. Ledger art evolves,” said Guardipee. “You go to my son, doing very abstract-looking ledger art, but it still connects to our culture. It still has to do with who we are, just in a different way of telling the story.”
The duo have both come away with top prizes at the Santa Fe Indian Market in recent years. For Guardipee, watching the ledger art movement grow and then seeing his son find his own path with the form is “the icing on the cake.”
CWC’s Native Voices event also includes screenings of the documentary “Free Leonard Peltier” in Riverton on May 5 and in Jackson on May 6. Film producer Jhane Meyers, who also worked on the 2022 film “Prey” in the “Predator” franchise, will be at both screenings for a post-showing discussion.
The celebration will wrap up on May 9 with the free sixth annual Teton Powwow at the Snow King Event Center in Jackson. The events are free and open to all.
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