My insurance went up more than that just last year.
I would like to see these landlords sit down and calculate what rent should be for their units, without local competition. These bureaucratic nitwits may be in for a shock.
EC
They don’t have to collude together. All they do is look at zillow and other rental aps to see what they think their property/rental is worth. If someone is charging more than the viewer is charging, the viewer wants in on that action and so raises the rent so if a 2 bedroom house is renting for $900, then the viewer is going to raise the $600 rent to 900. It doesn’t matter if the $900 house has polished wood floors and granite countertops and is in a decent neighborhood, its a 2 br house so the dump now has higher rent. If it has a higher rent, it now has a higher selling price too.