Two Common Tactics Used by Regressives
Journalist Patrick Range McDonald provides an illuminating example of two common tactics used by Progressives Regressives. In an opinion piece at The Hill, he proclaims that rent control saves lives. His “proof”: “There is no legitimate evidence that rent control leads to a reduction in housing supply.” He goes on to state that studies in New Jersey and Washington, D.C. found that rent control had no negative impact on new housing development.
The first tactic used by McDonald is to make an assertion and then offer as evidence facts that have no direct relevance to the claim. In this piece, the author claims that rent control saves lives, and he uses studies of new housing development as his “proof.” But he makes no connection between his claim and alleged evidence. Even if rent control doesn’t lead to a decrease in new housing development (which is a very dubious claim), that tells us nothing about the overall housing stock.
New housing is typically exempt from rent control. In cities with rent control, developers often build new apartments that won’t immediately be subject to the price caps. But the housing stock that is subject to rent control decreases as property owners convert their buildings to condominiums, upgrade their apartments (which usually removes the housing from rent controls), or take other steps to avoid arbitrary limits on their profit. And that brings us to the second tactic used by Regressives.
McDonald claims that there is no legitimate evidence that rent control reduces the housing supply. He can make this claim only if he ignores studies that conclude otherwise. As one example. The Rand Corporation published a study that found that rent control reduced the housing supply in Los Angeles.
Another study found that rent control reduced the supply of rental units in Cambridge and Brookline, Massachusetts declined by 8 percent and 12 percent in the 1980s after stringent rent control laws were enacted.
A study of rent control in Berkeley and Santa Monica in California found the supply of rental housing dropped 14 percent in Berkeley and 8 percent in Santa Monica between 1978 and 1990, even though the rental supply rose in most nearby cities (St. John and Associates, Rent Control in Perspective — Impacts on Citizens and housing in Berkeley and Santa Monica Twelve Years Later, Berkeley: Pacific Legal Foundation, 1993).
These findings are not confined to the United States. A study in the United Kingdom found that after rent control was imposed the supply of privately owned rental housing dropped from 53 percent in 1950 to less than 8 percent in 1986 (R.N. Chubb, Position Paper: United Kingdom. Report UP/L(87)28 (Paris: Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, 1987).
Intellectual honesty requires one to acknowledge evidence that may conflict with one’s conclusion. It requires us to consider the full context. Regressives refuse to do so. They look only at evidence that supports their position and simply dismiss any contrary evidence.
If McDonald were truly interested in solving the affordable housing crisis, he would at least acknowledge the existence of studies such as those cited above. And then, if he found those studies lacking, he would point out why. But he doesn’t do this. Instead, he pretends that these studies don’t exist. This is neither good journalism nor intellectually honest.