{"id":9023,"date":"2017-11-27T07:00:57","date_gmt":"2017-11-27T12:00:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/?p=9023"},"modified":"2017-11-26T23:17:09","modified_gmt":"2017-11-27T04:17:09","slug":"should-there-be-rent-control-near-the-purple-line","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/?p=9023","title":{"rendered":"Should There Be Rent Control Near the Purple Line?"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Adam Pagnucco.<\/em><\/p>\n

Council Member Marc Elrich, who recently equated potential gentrification near the Purple Line with \u201cethnic cleansing,\u201d is taking<\/a> flak<\/a> for his remarks and is not backing down<\/a>.\u00a0 We will leave it to others to judge his choice of words.\u00a0 But what interests us is the policy proposal he has made: specifically, Elrich would like to see rent control imposed near Purple Line stations<\/a>.\u00a0 That\u2019s worth discussing.<\/p>\n

Economists tend to disagree on many issues but a huge<\/a> majority<\/a> of them oppose rent control.\u00a0 Liberal New York Times columnist Paul Krugman has written<\/a>, \u201cAlmost every freshman-level textbook contains a case study on rent control, using its known adverse side effects to illustrate the principles of supply and demand.\u201d\u00a0 A massive review of economic research on rent control<\/a> found evidence that it encourages conversions of rental units into condos and leads to higher rents in non-controlled units.\u00a0 Rent control repeal in Cambridge, Massachusetts led to a surge in property values in both controlled and non-controlled units<\/a> and a 20% increase in housing investment<\/a>.\u00a0 Even Communists denounce rent control.\u00a0 In 1989, Vietnamese Foreign Minister Nguyen Co Thach told a news conference<\/a> that rent control did more damage to his capital city than American bombs.\u00a0 \u201cThe Americans couldn\u2019t destroy Hanoi, but we have destroyed our city by very low rents. We realized it was stupid and that we must change policy.\u201d<\/p>\n

One need not go to a Communist nation to observe the effects of rent control.\u00a0 MoCo has a good example of that policy right here at home: the City of Takoma Park, which passed a rent control law<\/a> in 1981.\u00a0 We examined U.S. Census data<\/a> to analyze how the city\u2019s housing stock compares to the county\u2019s.\u00a0 Below we show that just 10% of the city\u2019s housing was built in 1980 or later, much lower than the county\u2019s percentage of 47%.\u00a0 That\u2019s not a fair comparison since the city is much older than the vast majority of areas in the county.\u00a0 However, other older areas inside the Beltway like Downtown Bethesda<\/a> (27%), Chevy Chase<\/a> (20%) and Downtown Silver Spring<\/a> (26%) have much higher percentages of their housing built in 1980 or later than Takoma Park.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

It gets worse.\u00a0 Takoma Park has been losing rental housing units for years.\u00a0 Below we show the city\u2019s total, owner-occupied and renter-occupied housing units in 2000, 2010 and the five year period of 2011-2015.\u00a0 During that time, the city\u2019s total housing units fell by 4% and its renter-occupied units fell by 18%.\u00a0 Owner-occupied units increased by 10% and vacancies rose by 30%.\u00a0 No housing policy that produces double-digit losses in rental units can be described as good for renters.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Takoma Park\u2019s housing decline is not going to turn around soon.\u00a0 According to the site plans, preliminary plans and sketch plans listed on the MoCo Planning Department\u2019s development tracking map<\/a>, only two housing projects with a combined seven units are pending in Takoma Park.\u00a0 Those units are all single family, which are exempt from the city\u2019s rent control law.<\/p>\n

This extract from the Planning Department\u2019s site plan map shows the huge contrast in development plans between Takoma Park and Downtown Silver Spring.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The implication of all this is clear: housing developers are steering clear of Takoma Park\u2019s rent control law.\u00a0 These folks are not going to be any more enthusiastic about rent control near Purple Line stations.\u00a0 Why does that matter?\u00a0 When it comes to building new housing, there are basically three options.\u00a0 First, you can build it near transit.\u00a0 Second, you can build it away from transit, thereby incurring the associated congestion and environmental costs.\u00a0 Or third, you can try to block it from being built, and that\u2019s one probable effect of rent control.\u00a0 But that won\u2019t stop population growth \u2013 instead, it will result in overcrowded housing, unsafe living conditions and code violations.\u00a0 (Such phenomena are not unknown in some areas of the county.)\u00a0 Rent control near the Purple Line just encourages options two and three.<\/p>\n

Finally, the Purple Line is a huge investment, costing at least $2.65 billion<\/a> to construct.\u00a0 Only an insane society would pour billions of dollars into a transit project and then stop new housing from being built next to it.\u00a0 Even Vietnamese Communists would agree.<\/p>\n

Disclosure: Your author is a long-time supporter of the Purple Line and is a <\/em>publicly listed supporter of Council Member Roger Berliner for Executive<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Adam Pagnucco. Council Member Marc Elrich, who recently equated potential gentrification near the Purple Line with \u201cethnic cleansing,\u201d is taking flak for his remarks and is not backing down.\u00a0 We will leave it to others to judge his choice of words.\u00a0 But what interests us is the policy proposal he has made: specifically, Elrich … Continue reading Should There Be Rent Control Near the Purple Line?<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[151,84,37],"tags":[1545,2085,1508,349,2082],"class_list":["post-9023","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-adam-pagnucco","category-marc-elrich","category-purple-line","tag-adam-pagnucco","tag-housing","tag-marc-elrich","tag-purple-line-2","tag-rent-control"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4mKJE-2lx","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9023","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9023"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9023\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9027,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9023\/revisions\/9027"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9023"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9023"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9023"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}