Rent Control Is The Only Antidote To Runaway Landlord Profits

Rent control is part of a multi-pronged strategy that policymakers must carry out to address the housing affordability and homelessness crises.

by Patrick Range McDonald, LA Progressive

Without any doubt, rent control is a key way to rein in corporate landlord greed – it’s probably the only way. The California Apartment Association and other Big Real Estate groups try to avoid that hard fact, but it’s clear why they oppose rent regulations. They don’t want anyone or anything getting in the way of charging higher and higher rents – no matter the consequences to the rest of us.

Between 2010 and 2019, it was a banner decade for landlords, especially corporate landlords that operate in multiple cities in California and across the nation. Zillow, the real estate site, found that tenants in the United States paid landlords a staggering $4.5 trillion in rent.

Rally to demand provincial rent control as housing crisis increases

“On Dec. 1,” Zillow reported in 2019, “the nation’s renters didn’t just make their last rent payment of the year — their landlords also collected their last rent payment of what was a very lucrative decade.”

U.S. renters not only paid landlords $4.5 trillion during the 2010s, but $512 billion in 2019 alone. Zillow noted that $4.5 trillion is higher than the 2018 GDP of Germany ($4 trillion), and $512 billion is larger than the 2018 GDP of Thailand ($505 billion) and just less than Argentina’s ($518 billion).