It is well known that rent control is not particularly effective in controlling rents; cities like New York and San Francisco have rent control and yet are quite expensive. Supporters of rent control, however, often argue that rent control is valuable for a different reason: it makes housing more stable, by making it more difficult for a tenant to be evicted for nonpayment of rent.
But it seems to me that there’s an assumption hidden behind this idea: that the neediest people are the ones who are ordinarily most stable, and thus do not suffer from rising housing costs as long as they are protected by rent control or similar measures. For example, law professor Richard Schragger complains that pro-housing zoning reform will “redound to the benefits of investors and developers and not to those residents with limited resources who seek to afford to remain in place.” (emphasis added) In the next sentence, he adds that “those in the market for housing- including middle-class families, recent college graduates, and young families– are often priced out of high-cost urban markets. But reforms should be careful not to equate their interests with those of the working class and especially minority poor…” (emphasis added)* In other words, the “working class” and “minority poor” and people “in the market for housing” are somehow two separate groups.
This assumption might be persuasive if poor people moved less often than other people. But neither common sense nor data support this idea. If you are poor, you might be less likely to have steady employment, which means that your income is likely to be unstable. Thus, you are more likely than other Americans to be evicted or to move voluntarily even if rents are stable. Even if you rely on government transfer payments, you are at risk for bureaucrats questioning your eligibility.
What do the data show? Census Table S0701 shows that over the five year period between 2017 and 2022, 10.6 percent of persons with incomes below the poverty level moved recently within the same county, as opposed to only 6.1 percent of persons with incomes at or above 150 percent of the poverty level. 7 percent of poor Americans switched counties or states, as opposed to 4.7 percent of persons with incomes over 150 percent of the poverty level. Thus, a total of 13.1 percent of the poor moved, as opposed to 10.8 percent of the nonpoor. This is not a new development: between 2011 and 2016, 14.6 percent of the poor moved within a county and 7.2 percent switched counties or states, as opposed to 6.9 percent and 4.4 percent for persons with incomes over 150 percent of the poverty level.
What about in cities with extensive rent control? In New York City, everyone moved less, but poor people still move more. 10 percent of the poor moved within a county or switched counties or states, as opposed to 8.5 percent of persons with incomes over 150 percent of the poverty level. In San Francisco, 15.9 percent of the poor moved, and 13.6 percent of the nonpoor. (These statistics only include people who move into these cities, not people forced out by rising rents).
*My quotes are from page 129 of this article.
