As I said, you can certainly dispute the goal of favoring incumbents over new residents. There are also issues with landlords in rich neighborhoods wiggling out of the controls, which lead to the rich/poor inequities you note.
But on net, it does what people want it to do: protects existing residents, with a minimal net impact to the housing economy.
Rent control does not prevent developers from building new construction, in fact it may promote new developments. Rent control reduces the cost of housing for a select few people who haven't moved in a while, which artificially raises the prices for newer tenants that just moved into a neighborhood. Higher prices for new tenants make developing new housing more attractive, not less.
I think you have switched cause and effect. Developers have to charge higher prices because they have to subsidize rent controlled units. Without rent control you may get away with charging $1000 per month to cover your costs and then slowly increasing prices as inflation picks up over the years.
If you expect 3% inflation but rent control only allows a 1% increase then only charging $1000 will result in a net loss over time so you will have to adjust the rent upward. Assuming a tenant in a rent controlled unit stays for 20 years then the land lord has to charge the tenant $1400 from day one.
> Developers have to charge higher prices because they have to subsidize rent controlled units.
I don't think these two points are contradictory. Yes, rent control increases housing prices on newer units. However, higher prices on newer units provides incentive for developers to build new construction rather than squeezing everything they can from existing ones.
You should read the article before you assert that your opinions rebut its contents.
If I didn't mind the financial outcome (because I didn't have the money in the first place) I'd have hung on for dear life.. instead I took the settlement and found another living situation.
> "The Cato Institute is an American libertarian think tank headquartered in Washington, D.C. It was founded as the Charles Koch Foundation in 1974 by Ed Crane, Murray Rothbard, and Charles Koch, chairman of the board and chief executive officer of the conglomerate Koch Industries."