Last November, voters in St. Paul approved the most stringent rent control law in the nation. This past week, a Minnesota Senator introduced a bill that would repeal that law and prohibit other municipalities from imposing rent control. This is an appropriate bill because rights, including property rights, are not subject to a vote.
The bill’s sponsor said that the destructive consequences of rent control are already becoming known. Housing projects are being cancelled, lenders are refusing to finance the construction of rent-controlled buildings, and landlords are raising rents in anticipation of rent control taking effect on May 1. These practical consequences were easy to predict since the same thing occurs in nearly every city with rent control. Rent control isn’t practical.
However, the fundamental reason to oppose rent control is moral. Rent control is impractical because it is immoral. Such laws interfere with the individual’s moral right to produce and trade on terms that he chooses.
Violating property rights is obviously not a concern of rent control advocates. At a hearing on the bill a spokesman for the Housing Justice Center noted that more than 180 U.S. cities have rent control. Apparently, she believes that because other cities have enacted destructive policies, St. Paul should be allowed to do so as well. But truth of an idea is not determined by the number of people who embrace it.
Nor is justice determined by a democratic vote. One Minnesotan who testified at the hearing, said that the bill would erase the votes of more than 100,000 voters and be an “attack on our democracy.” And she is correct in the sense that the bill would limit the actions of the democratic mob. Democracy means unlimited majority rule, that the majority may do as it pleases simply because it is the majority. Concepts such as truth, justice, and rights can be obliterated if the majority votes to do so.
Rights are not subject to a vote. To claim otherwise is to relegate rights to the status of temporary permissions that can be revoked whenever a majority decides. It means that individuals cannot act as they choose, but only with the permission of the majority. The St. Paul rent control ordinance forces landlords to act as the voters have dictated.