• About
  • Adam Hengels
  • Emily Hamilton
  • Michael Lewyn
  • Salim Furth
  • What Should I Read to Understand Zoning?
  • Contact

Market Urbanism

Liberalizing cities | From the bottom up

“Market Urbanism” refers to the synthesis of classical liberal economics and ethics (market), with an appreciation of the urban way of life and its benefits to society (urbanism). We advocate for the emergence of bottom up solutions to urban issues, as opposed to ones imposed from the top down.

  • Email
  • Facebook
  • Linkedin
  • RSS
  • Twitter
  • Economics
  • housing
  • planning
  • Zoning
  • Urban[ism] Legends
  • Book Reviews

Rent regulation in MoCo

March 28, 2023 By Salim Furth

In my home county, Montgomery County, Maryland, rent control is on the agenda after County Executive Marc Elrich and a county council majority each released competing proposals to cap annual rent increases.

Adam Pagnucco responded with a series of posts at Montgomery Perspective about the prospect of rent control. His series begins with a great rundown of the economics literature on rent control, and continues by examining the effects of rent control in DC and Takoma Park respectively, with reflections from his personal experience living in a rent-controlled apartment in DC. In his conclusion, he cites the anemic pace of new housing construction to argue for a real way forward: instead of rent control, give the county’s recent liberalizing reforms time to work.

I contributed a post to the series demonstrating the effects of rent control on condo conversions within Takoma Park, which has had strict “rent stabilization” since 1981. I was able to exploit a natural experiment by examining one of the city’s boundaries, Flower Avenue, to be able to claim the rare causal effect: rent control caused condo conversions of 15 percent of multifamily buildings.

In a follow-up post, Adam links to a Takoma Park city report from 2017 which noted that Takoma Park’s young adult population declined from 2000 to 2015, and that no new multifamily rental units have been constructed in the city since the 1970s – before rent control was adopted.

Mercatus research assistant Eli Kahn helped draft this post.

A typical Flower Avenue sixplex. Tax records suggest it became a condo in 2010.
Tweet

Filed Under: Economics, rent control, Uncategorized

About Salim Furth

Salim Furth is a senior research fellow and co-director of a research project on urbanism. He earned his Ph.D. in economics from the University of Rochester. The views he expresses on Market Urbanism are not those of his employer.

Listen in

  • Abundance
  • Conversations with Tyler
  • Densely Speaking
  • Ideas of India
  • Order Without Design
  • UCLA Housing Voice
  • Yeoman

Connect With Us

  • Email
  • Facebook
  • Linkedin
  • RSS
  • Twitter

Market Sites Urbanists should check out

  • Arpitrage
  • Cafe Hayek
  • Center for Building in North America blog
  • Construction Physics
  • Conversable Economist
  • Environmental and Urban Economics | Matt Kahn
  • Erdmann Housing Tracker
  • Foundation for Economic Education
  • Marginal Revolution
  • Marginal Revolution University
  • Parafin
  • Propmodo
  • Rent Free
  • Time & Space
  • Urbanomics

Urbanism Sites capitalists should check out

  • Caos Planejado
  • City Density
  • Cornerstone
  • Granola Shotgun
  • Important Readings in Urbanism
  • Kartografia Ekstremalna
  • Metropolitan Abundance Project
  • Pedestrian Observations
  • Planetizen
  • Reinventing Parking
  • Skynomics Blog
  • StreetsBlog USA
  • Strong Towns
  • The Corner Side Yard | Pete Saunders
  • YIMBY Alliance

Meta

  • Log in
  • Entries RSS
  • Comments RSS
  • WordPress.org

Copyright © 2025 Market Urbanism