Expanding Rent Control Will Not Make Housing More Affordable for the Disabled
Rent control proponents like to argue that the policy will make housing more affordable. Now they’re claiming it will also make it more accessible to people with disabilities.
That’s the thrust of a new article from Mother Jones reporter Julia Métraux, who writes that California’s state-level limits on local rent control policies “increasingly limits disabled and aging people’s ability to get accessible, affordable housing—practically impossible on a fixed income.”
On the ballot this year is Proposition 33, which would repeal those state-level limits. Disability advocates tell Métraux repeal would be a huge win for disabled tenants’ ability to afford housing that’s accessible to them.
Would it?
Neither Métraux nor the activists she interviews quite explain how that would work.
The basic argument appears to be that new housing is more likely to be accessible to those with disabilities, but California’s Costa-Hawkins Act (which Prop. 33 would repeal) forbids localities from imposing rent control on newer housing units.
By repealing Costa-Hawkins, cities could use rent control to drive down the cost of newer housing, thus making it affordable for people disabilities.
There’s a surface logic to this argument, but doesn’t really make sense once one starts to walk through the mechanics of it.
For starters, rent control policies typically don’t involve literally setting rents but rather limiting annual rent increases.
But if existing housing is already too expensive for people with disabilities, then limiting the rate at which it gets more expensive won’t do them any good. Housing that’s already unattainable will just grow increasingly unattainable at a slightly slower rate.
Should Prop. 33 pass, it would be l
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