The Effects of Rent Control Expansion on Tenants, Landlords, and Inequality: Evidence from San Francisco

By Rebecca Diamond, Timothy J McQuade, Franklin Qian. The American Economic Review, 2019

335 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Using a 1994 law change, we exploit quasi-experimental variation in the assignment of rent control in San Francisco to study its impacts on tenants and landlords. Leveraging new data tracking individuals’ migration, we find rent control limits renters’ mobility by 20 percent and lowers displacement from San Francisco. Landlords treated by rent control reduce rental housing supplies by 15 percent by selling to owner-occupants and redeveloping buildings. Thus, while rent control prevents displacement of incumbent renters in the short run, the lost rental housing supply likely drove up market rents in the long run, ultimately undermining the goals of the law. (JEL R23, R31, R38)

Subfields: Economics and Econometrics, Finance, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/8989b0cb1b834cdbcf20c65c15599a3d86c8382c

Citations in the corpus

• Income Growth and the Distributional Effects of Urban Spatial Sorting (2019, neutral): “(2013), Edlund et al. (2016), Ellen et al. (2017), Berkes and Gaetani (2018), Vigdor et al. (2002), Lance Freeman (2005), McKinnish et al. (2010); Ellen and ORegan (2010), Ding et al.”