- Illustration: Levi Greenacres
IT’S A WILD-EYED time for tenants in the Portland metro housing market. In 2008, a two-bedroom, two-bathroom apartment cost an average of $847. In 2015, the same apartment goes for an average of $1,432—a 69 percent increase.
Local government, civic, and community groups are scrambling to find solutions. Earlier this month, City Club of Portland launched a study seeking ways to increase access to affordable housing. Among the policies being considered: rent control.
The term is a catch-all for strategies that limit how much landlords can charge tenants. Its purpose is to maintain a certain number of affordable units for middle- and lower-income residents, but options for how to do that are currently limited under state law.
Rent control’s a dirty phrase among developers and landlords, who claim the rental market is a supply and demand issue—that if we simply build more units, prices will drop. It’s also maligned by some economists. Portland real estate consultant Jerry Johnson recently told Willamette Week it’s “an Econ 101-level policy disaster.”
But the issue is not quite that simple.
“Econ 101 is about widgets, and housing is a complicated social issue,” says Lisa Bates, associate professor at the Toulan School of Urban Studies and Planning at Portland State University. “Comparing the two violates every assumption of Econ 101, since there are a few more classes after that.”
The question isn’t whether or not rent control would have consequences, Bates says—because it would.
“It’s really not even a question for economists at all,” she says. “It’s a question of what we want our social and political values to be.”