As a former Civil Engineer [4] and advocate of commodity-housing [1], I can tell you that rent control [3] is the minor issue here. I'm glad that HN is finally paying some attention to the elephant in the room...zoning laws. I bet that for most HNers who pay rent, it is about 50-60% of monthly expenses. This is freaking ridiculous! Look at it from a Civil Engineer's perspective: modern houses are built from very durable materials, and once constructed the maintenance expenses are minimal.

Is it that hard to connect the dots? People in power are all landlords, and they get a big chunk of their idle income via rents [2]. All they need to do is make sure that no new housing is constructed where they own rental property...basically protection racketeering. Next time you visit the Golden Gate park just spare a few minutes to read the plaque next to Joseph Strauss' statue. It says, "the biggest opposition to building the bridge came from the landlords of San Francisco, who feared that once the bridge was built, it would lead to a nose dive in rents".

[1] Housing so abundant that rents are on the order of maintenance costs, about $50-100/month!

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3959941

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-investor/personal-finan...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3959500

[3] http://www.baycitizen.org/columns/elizabeth-lesly-stevens/sm...

This article describes in depth the problem you are facing, and since you are a new landlord it does seem like the biggest issue ;)

[4] One of the reasons for leaving Civil Engineering was the realization that the problem of high-cost-of-housing was not an engineering problem, but completely a political and social one. Constructing abundant, high quality and cheap housing was declared a solved problem in Civil Engineering by the 60s!