Like it helps those who have one at a greater expense to renters without one
I think rent control advocates focus on people who might be lucky enough to get a rent controlled apartment, but it is much harder to think about what happens to all the people who want to move to a city but can't because no housing stock is available.
Why not complain about the high-rises full of empty apartments bought by oligarchs for money laundering? Why not complain about the tens of thousands of airbnb units?
NYC is actually quite good in terms of building supply, but the demand is also extremely high. Some of that demand is completely artificial due to money laundering and short-term rentals, and without fixing those issues, how can we expect people to live without limiting maximally increasing rents?
There aren't really that many high rises full of empty apartments bought by oligarchs for money laundering in NY. And even when there are - how much land does it actually take up? At the Central Park Tower for example, 180 oligarchs can launder their money in a 200'x200' plot of land. You'll walk by it in less than a minute without really clocking it.
I do also complain about airbnb units :)
The vertical size of that, however, could be used to house at least a thousand (or more) people.
This is mostly a manhattan problem, but there's a quite large volume of the market there (due to the valuations) that are ultra-high-end, which tends to be vacant units used for money laundering. Same issue in a lot of the larger cities.
Luxury taxes (on both the sale, and ongoing yearly costs) can help reduce the problem as well as provide tax income for the cities. It's easily a win/win.
> People with a rent controlled unit will not leave even when they should, because they have it so good.
... What do you mean "when they should"? If they don't want to leave because the rent is OK and they like living there, why should they move?
I guess one fundamental difference with Spain VS US or probably many other countries, is that here in Spain we have "the right to housing" enshrined in our constitution. This makes it so it's more important for residents and citizens to be able to find housing, than it is for owners to be able to make profits on owning properties/land.
The laws in the country should reflect this, and thankfully, they're starting to, albeit slowly.
The “right to housing” is a joke when the US essentially makes it illegal to build new units in most areas.
Because of that restriction, rent control causes the small number of limited units to be subsided by everyone else paying more, as basic supply and demand dictates
You are applying a viewpoint which is not universally applicable, nor is it static where it does apply.
If you accept that housing is not market in which all parties have equal leverage to bargain, then you should also accept that regulating it to be more fair is not bad by definition.
We happened to regulate it in ways that were counterproductive previously, but the regulation itself is not guaranteed to always be counterproductive, unless you believe that discrepancies in leverage cannot be mitigated by regulation while the lack of leverage itself is being created partially by other regulation.
Who cares how high their income is or how big the property is? If they pay the rent and want to continue living there, they should be able to continue living there. Taking someone's home away from them because "now you earn more money" or "now you're less people" sounds very inhumane, and I'm glad Spain wouldn't allow such discrimination.
I don't know why you bring up US laws, utterly irrelevant in this submission.
And this is not unreasonable. If math originally works out, then it will continue to work out. System really should not rely on property price appreciation or arbitrary rent bumps.
You could take the difference between the market rent and contract rent to calculate a subsidy. Then you could calculate the net present value of the future subsidy payments. This is often a very significant amount of money that you just lose if you move.
Another way of looking at it. Let's say you need 40sqm of space. You rent an apartment of 100sqm. These square meters don't bring you any joy of quality of life at all. If you owned you would move. If you rented at market rate you would move. But if you rent it at a controlled rent you must hold onto it for dear life because maybe you will need it when you start a family in the far future. Getting another contract this good could be very uncertain.