Talk:Rent regulation/Archives/2014

POV

Rent control in the United States and Rent control in New York contain significant arguments in favor of rent control. What happened to them? This page should summarize and cite both sides of the issue. The The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics is cited to boldly claim that rent control doesn't work, and it just so happens that this 'encyclopedia' is published by conservative libertarian propaganda outfit the Liberty Fund. Not even close to Wikipedia's minimal standards of neutrality. --Dennis Bratland (talk) 19:14, 11 October 2013 (UTC)

Agreed that this page should focus on the reasons people have put forward for instituting rent control, especially relative to biased sources working against any form of control. Binksternet (talk) 19:50, 11 October 2013 (UTC)

The last part of the Theory section is totally reliant on the Arnott paper, which is pretty explicitly a reaction against more mainstream economic points of view. (That mainstream view being represented, for example, here.) Currently, the reader gets the impression that opposition to rent control ended in the 90s, which is very much not the case. It would be nice to add some citations and discussion correcting that. Davatk (talk) 22:02, 2 May 2014 (UTC)

Perhaps that should be edited in. The theory section is incredibly biased here to a minority view that most economists disagree with. It is fairly uncontroversial among economists that rent control is harmful — Preceding unsigned comment added by 108.15.111.215 (talk) 16:56, 14 August 2014 (UTC)

I disagree. The studies that attempt to show "most" economists oppose rent control cherry pick whom they count as an economist, and which studies they want to cite. And they tend to be rather obtuse on the difference between the supply of affordable housing vs the supply of housing. The widespred use of rent control in advanced economies suggests that the subset of economists who oppose it are out of step with modern economic policy.

Criticisms of rent regulation or rent control should be based on specific facts, not argument from authority which tries to bolster a claim by appealing to some nebulous definition of "most economists", as if there were some consensus in that field comparable to the consensus in hard sciences. --Dennis Bratland (talk) 19:23, 14 August 2014 (UTC)

What I cited was a literature review of many studies. What you cited was one paper, and claimed that that is a more modern view. There is more evidence of negative effect from an entire literature review, and of consensus of research, than of one single study.Thuston94 (talk) 03:54, 15 August 2014 (UTC)

Libertarians such as Mises and CATO hate rent control because it goes against their basic tenet of minimal government. Capitalists hate rent control because it limits profit made by landlords. The metrics that economists use to decry rent control are ridiculous: they assume that a city should flex to meet housing demand and accept a great deal of residential churn in the market, when a city might rather have residential stability and its benefits, such as less crime and greater pleasure from living among familiar neighbors. Rent control is not a simple question that can be answered by economists, who are in any case practitioners of a soft science lacking hard answers. Rather, rent control is a matter to be determined by citizens and city planners, with more factors at play than libertarians and capitalists would have us examine. So if economists are largely against rent control that does not mean Wikipedia must say rent control is bad. Binksternet (talk) 05:52, 15 August 2014 (UTC)

Here's an enlightening paper written by a rent control board attorney in NYC. Binksternet (talk) 06:12, 15 August 2014 (UTC)

Thuston is right. The Arnott piece is one guy explicitly expressing - in the abstract, no less - HIS opposition to the mainstream, so if you want to claim that the new view of "economists" as of the 1990s is Arnott's, you need some other source. Otherwise it's a [citation needed] claim . The econjournalwatch reference is a survey and DOES constitute support for the view that that is the mainstream view, especially in the context of Arnott AGREEING that this is the case. It's fine for YOU to think rent control is great, but the article should correctly represent the truth, which is NOT that economists suddenly changed their minds about it in the 1990s. Thus, I'm undoing the revert. Blogjack (talk) 10:11, 17 August 2014 (UTC)

Whenever you hear someone saying their edits represent "The Truth" you can be pretty sure they're pushing a POV. The first obvious flaw with the summary study is that it is not a random poll of economists. It's a summary of selected research. What most economists think and what you get by choosing a set of published articles are two different things. There's no mechanism to make sure that journal articles magically represent a democratic sample of economists.

One solution to this would be to use better attribution to the sources making the claims, and as I said, cite specific criticisms of rent control rather than try to make sweeping claims that use argument from authority to persuade readers. This is a highly political subject, and so political persuasion should be left out except to cite notable individual opinions. You can de-politicise the subject by sticking to facts about rent control. --Dennis Bratland (talk) 15:36, 17 August 2014 (UTC)

I'm sorry if I was unclear, but I was UNDOING a POV change. The edit you're pushing says "The view developed among American economists in the 1990s ... is that "a well-designed rent control can be beneficial." and gives as a reference for this an article by Arnott. If you READ the article by Arnott he explicitly does NOT say that this is the mainstream view. He argues that it SHOULD be the mainstream view and that *perhaps* the view is changing in that direction but quite clearly puts forth this view as a CHALLENGE to the overwhelming mainstream view. In fact, THAT VERY REFERENCE - not just the one I was trying to put back in - starts out by providing evidence the overwhelming view among economists in the 1990s is that rent control is harmful. Here is the full study your edit references: http://www.aeaweb.org/articles.php?doi=10.1257/jep.9.1.99 and here are the first three sentences in it: "Economists have been virtually unanimous in their opposition to rent control. In a survey of economists' opinions, Alston, Kearl, and Vaughan (1992) asked a stratified random sample of 1990 American Economic Association members whether they "generally agree," "agree with provisions," or "generally disagree" with 40 statements related to economic theory and policy. The greatest degree of consensus on any question—93.5 percent—was agreement or qualified agreement with the statement: "A ceiling on rents reduces the quantity and quality of housing available." Arnott goes forth to claim that there's been a recent "wave (or at least a swell)" of revisionism that has made the criticisms more muted but does not put any numbers to it. He goes on to add "Is it time for the profession to reconsider its opposition to rent control?" which yet again establishes that in Arnott's view, the profession DOES still as a whole oppose rent control. The chief problem (with the edit) is that leading "The". To say that "THE view developed among American economists in the 1990s ... is that a well-designed rent control can be beneficial" suggests that MOST or ALL or even A SUBSTANTIAL NUMBER of economists started thinking this in the 1990s. Which is not true, and the very link referenced to support it SAYS it's not true, so it's also not SUPPORTED BY THE LITERATURE. The citation given doesn't verify it, and in fact verifies the exact opposite claim as does the citation I was trying to put (back) in. It would be less objectionable to position Arnott's claim as "A" view developed among SOME economists in the 1990s; then at least the cite would support what the text says...and that text was in the change you just re-reverted. Blogjack (talk) 17:53, 17 August 2014 (UTC)

First Generation v. Second Generation

This article fails to make the distinction between 1st generation rent control (aka price caps and freezes) and second generation rent control, which limits the amount a landlord can raise rents (aka protection against predatory landlords). Economic consensus is that the two are so different as to barely even be related to one another in their effects on the market, but this article draws no distinction between what sort of rent control is being discussed.

It's such a huge issue it falls straight into being misleading and deceptive. Rent ceilings are incredibly different from limitations on price increases. By not discussing the different forms of rent control and their different impacts, you've crafted an article that teaches the reader pretty much nothing. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.104.189.139 (talk) 15:33, 26 October 2014 (UTC)