Progressive Regressive “journalist” Patrick Range McDonald informs us that renters paid a total of $512 billion to landlords in 2019. This, he wants us to believe, is evidence of “corporate landlord greed.” Certainly, that’s a lot of money. However, it proves nothing other than McDonald’s inability to consider the full context. In doing so, he advocates policies that created and is exacerbating the problem he claims to want to solve.
As Regressives always do, McDonald focuses on the group—renters. He lumps all of them together, ignoring the fact that while many are cost-burdened (paying more than 30 percent of their income on housing), the majority of renters are not cost-burdened. And he does the same with landlords.
In calling for rent control to rein in “corporate landlord greed,” he evades the fact that “mom-and-pop” landlords own the majority of rental housing in the United States. These landlords will also be trapped in rent control hell, and many will escape by selling to corporate landlords. Such companies have the resources and financial strength to overcome the challenges and costs imposed by rent control and other “renters’ protections.” Small landlords don’t, and when faced with increasing costs and the mind-numbing bureaucracy that results from controls and regulations, they abandon ship.
In other words, government housing policies make it more difficult, and sometimes impossible, for small landlords to profitably produce housing. When those policies create new problems, the Progressives demand more controls and regulations.
Since McDonald cites California as an example, I will as well. California is arguably leading the nation in housing unaffordability and homelessness. The state also leads the nation in placing severe restrictions on development and housing construction. The latter is the cause. The former is the effect.
When controls and regulations make it impossible to profitably produce housing, builders and developers quit producing housing. The imposition of rent control is simply exacerbating the problem because profits are further restricted.
If McDonald and other Regressives truly wanted to solve the housing crisis, they would not call for more restrictions on those who produce housing. They would call for the removal of the shackles on builders and developers. That they don’t do so shows us that solving the housing crisis isn’t their real motivation.