Talk:Rent regulation

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)

Name

The reason that "rent control" is not the most accurate term is that often there is nobody doing the control - it is simply a market regulation rule, which might be administered by a court (like any breach of contract claim) or alternatively by a government body.

In the UK, the old statutes did in fact use the term "rent control" and the term was historically common in the US as well. But more modern statutes, like those in Canada use the term "regulation". This does not mean that the pages on particular countries should change their names! Wikidea 15:20, 3 December 2013 (UTC)

I've undone the move as whether or not it's the right name it wasn't done properly: moving an article should only be done with the move function, not by cutting and pasting the content, to preserve page history. Given the redirect's history it can't now be moved without an admin. Given that, and the disagreement over it, a requested move is I think now needed before it is moved again.--JohnBlackburne^words_deeds 15:45, 3 December 2013 (UTC)

I DID use the move function. The OTHER user moved it back without the move function! Please check the history. Wikidea 15:50, 3 December 2013 (UTC)

There should be a formal move request made for this topic, so others can voice their thoughts. Binksternet (talk) 15:56, 3 December 2013 (UTC)

A move request would be a waste of time. It violates WP:COMMONNAME and WP:RETAIN, and so has no chance. Why not instead spend the time expanding the article to address the neutrality problems? --Dennis Bratland (talk) 16:17, 3 December 2013 (UTC)