Rent control is a backdoor method of appropriating the ownership of real property and vesting it in some other claimant called a tenant. Granted, the ownership of real property is never absolute, there are limits such as limits on creating pollution which encroaches onto neighbors property, limits which prohibit the maintenance of public nuisances, even limits which have to do with zoning, limits which have to do with legitimate property taxes but rent control takes some of the indicia of ownership, the right to charge market rents, away from the landlord and regulates that rent to the advantage of the tenant. In doing so it transfers some of the elements of ownership of real estate from the landlord to the tenant.
Politicians are motivated to do this because as stupid as they are they can still count and they know that there are more tenants than landlords and there are more tenants who vote than landlords who vote. Nevertheless, politicians like to have to have nice sounding rhetoric with which to rationalize their depriving a segment of society of its rights. So in this article we read about market forces driving out middle class and lower class tenants. Have you ever heard of a rent control ordinance that requires tenants to pay above market rents when a neighborhood deteriorates? An ordinance which prohibits tenants from moving out of their apartment?
Rent control ordinances are wealth redistribution at the micro level but they really hurt individuals as they damage the local economy. They are even worse than condemnation for private benefit because rent control ordinances provide inadequate compensation to the rightful legal owners of real estate for the taking of their property.
Worse scenarios have occurred in which landlords face criminal charges for failure to maintain rent-controlled property when the rents are regulated below the price needed to perform maintenance. Many landlords have been forced out of their property because of the squeeze, but then they face the ultimate irony, if they abandon their property they can be criminally charged.
Bingo. Thanks, Bedford.