In 2024, Massachusetts voters may be asked to repeal the state’s ban on rent control. The proposed constitutional amendment would allow municipalities to impose rent caps. The Massachusetts Attorney General has yet to decide if the matter should be on the ballot. As is the case of a similar measure in California, this is not an issue that should be submitted to voters. Rights are not subject to a vote.
Proponents of the amendment argue that the real estate industry “has extracted untold profits from our communities and reaped the gains of housing inflation.” Because real estate interests have “realized the most benefit from the housing emergency and the ongoing inflation in residential rents,” it is only fair to limit their future profits.
To the advocates of rent control, housing producers take advantage of renters. This view ignores the fact that voluntary economic transactions are beneficial to both parties. In the case of rental housing, the landlord obtains money, and the tenant obtains housing. But to rent control advocates, this is a lop-sided trade because landlords are obtaining “too much” money. Landlords, they argue, benefit far more than renters. Therefore, it is appropriate for the government to intervene.
Rent control forces housing producers to trade on terms that they would not voluntarily accept. Indeed, the very purpose of using force is to compel actions that individuals would not undertake willingly. Since tenants and housing activists can’t use reason to convince landlords to keep rents low, they advocate using force to compel landlords to keep rent low.
Landlords have a moral right to offer whatever terms and conditions that they judge best, and tenants have a moral right to accept or reject those terms and conditions. Neither landlords nor tenants have a right to force the other to act contrary to their own judgment.
Whether a majority of voters favors rent control is irrelevant. Rights are not subject to a vote. To claim otherwise is to relegate rights to the status of temporary permissions that may be revoked whenever the majority deems it appropriate.