We’re joining DC’s Reclaim Rent Control coalition. Here’s why.

DC will soon renew its rent stabilization policy, which limits the amount rent can increase in older apartment buildings of a certain size. Last year, in anticipation of this, a coalition called the Reclaim Rent Control was formed to push for a more expansive policy.

The coalition’s members include: DC for Democracy, DC Tenants Union, DC Fiscal Policy Institute, Empower DC, Fair Budget Coalition, Latino Economic Development Center, Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC), Metro DC DSA, Unite Here Local 25, and the Washington Legal Clinic for the Homeless, among others. GGWash’s Advocacy Committee has decided that GGWash should join the coalition as well.

Based on comments on posts that we’ve run about rent control over the past few years, we suspect some readers will be very enthusiastic about this, and some will strongly disagree. So we wanted to explain our reasons.

How GGWash makes decisions like this

GGWash has two components: our media organization, which publishes our news site, and our policy work, through which our staff advocates for policies around housing and transportation that reflect GGWash’s goals. We try to keep readers informed about what our policy staff is working on, and seek feedback from our community when possible.

Our “program committees” of volunteers advise us, and make decisions when there isn’t obvious community-wide consensus. Our Editorial Board decides content policy for the publication, our Advocacy Committee decides when we take a position on policy issues, and our Elections Committee decides who we endorse for office.

We, of course, want to continue to publish articles on GGWash about rent control and its subtleties. We also want to engage in a dialogue with community members, including commenters, including with this post. Making a decisive choice about an advocacy action is not an end-all, be-all of where we stand conceptually on any given policy, and we hope that this is an opportunity for more dialogue, education, and writing about rent stabilization.

Why joining coalitions is important

Our housing program, which I manage, has three goals: to shape policies and organize efforts to build more housing; to end exclusionary land-use practices like single-family zoning; and to continually question and unpack what equitable economic development means, or might look like, as the District continues to grow. (Look for a more detailed article about this soon.)

We believe in preserving existing housing, protecting people from predatory and disruptive practices, and producing more housing than we do now. Though we principally work on policies around production, we do not think that these “three Ps” contradict each other. And we don’t expect organizations whose primary mission is to preserve existing affordable housing, or to defend tenants against slumlords, to work, as we do, on issues of supply and land-use law. That would be scope creep, which isn’t a good thing when most nonprofits have limited time, resources, funding, and staff.

Such limitations on individual organizations mean that coalitions are useful. Not every organization can do everything in a given field, which makes banding together effective. Coalitions derive some of their power from being a chorus of voices, something that tends to be louder than a lone voice; this is especially helpful when working on legislation. And, joining coalitions is a way to show solidarity and respect for others’ work, especially when it intersects with, but is not primarily, your own.

GGWash is joining the Reclaim Rent Control coalition because any change to the existing Rent Stabilization Act will have a direct impact on how people in the District experience housing in it, because the majority of District residents are tenants. Put simply: Rent control is considered a housing policy, and GGWash has a housing program. This is something that makes sense for us to be involved in.

We also have a stated commitment to diversifying our organization, and making our advocacy work more inclusive. There are numerous ways to address this through the policy that we work on and support. Building homes, because we haven’t built enough homes, especially in affluent areas with lots of amenities, is one, and the one that we spend most of our time on. But rent stabilization has a significant role in this landscape, too: It allows people to afford housing that they might not otherwise be able to.

Why are we talking about rent control?

Last June, New York State had a major rent control battle, which—due to sustained organizing efforts by an upstart coalition of activists—resulted in an unprecedented expansion of rent regulations in the state.

Economists tend to be quite skeptical of rent control, routinely finding that it stifles housing supply. However, the economics profession has its blind spots, and rarely considers rent control in the context of other factors, like increased residential density. (Rent-control advocates, for their part, also frequently miss the mark on the necessity of increasing housing supply.) In general, those that favor the free market act like they’ve been electrocuted every time someone says the words “rent control.”

But even some economists have, lately, gone to bat for the importance of rent control to providing stable housing for people in cities with high housing costs, and have noted that it is probably not the reason that the construction of new homes is stifled. The evolution of thinking around rent control is a central feature to this November 2019 testimony, by J.W. Mason, an assistant professor of economics at City University of New York:

Rent regulation may be going through a similar evolution today. You may still see textbooks saying that as a price control, rent regulation will reduce the supply of housing. But as the share of Americans renting their homes has increased, more and more jurisdictions are considering or implementing rent regulation. This has brought new attention from economists, and as with the minimum wage, we are finding that the simple supply-and-demand story doesn’t capture what happens in the real world.

Likewise, Devin Michelle Bunten, an assistant professor of urban economics and housing at MIT, writes in an op-ed for the Boston Globe:

Boston’s current approach—limited new housing options and limited rent control—has meant the displacement of whole communities. The city needs new housing, and it needs affordable housing—one doesn’t stand in the way of the other. … Instituting rent control in Boston won’t solve all of our housing problems, and it certainly won’t end the housing shortage. But that cannot be our only goal. Stabilizing the marginalized communities of Massachusetts, no strangers to displacement, is a worthy pursuit on its own.

What’s going on with rent control in DC

DC has a “rent stabilization” policy, instituted by the first Home Rule-era DC council in 1975, and it’s up for renewal every 10 years. This time around, the Reclaim Rent Control coalition is calling on the council to expand, rather than simply extend, the existing legislation.

Like any bill, it gets a hearing (which happened in November), is marked up, and is voted on by the council at a first reading and a final reading (which will happen sometime this year). All of those points in the legislative process are opportunities to modify how a law works or will be implemented. The Reclaim Rent Control coalition is arguing to expand the law’s provisions and close some of its loopholes.

Major features of the coalition’s platform are:

• Include four-unit buildings and buildings built before 2005, both now and going forward with a dynamic eligibility date. Right now, the law only applies to buildings larger than four units and which were built before 1975.
• Restrict practices that let landlords get out of rent stabilization, like agreements where existing tenants keep low rents but vacant units rise to market rate, and clarify what kinds of improvements to buildings allow rents to increase.
• Limit rent increases to the same rate as the Consumer Price Index (CPI), rather than the CPI + 2% as today. (This is referred to in short as “CPI + 0%”).

You can read the full platform on the coalition’s website.

What about the tradeoffs?

GGWash was not involved in the formation of the Reclaim Rent Control platform. I’m happy to have an intellectual debate about the merits of policies like CPI + 0%, or whether buildings older or newer than 15 years should be subject to rent control, but we are not seeking to argue with any of the planks in the coalition’s platform; we don’t have the opportunity to change them.

Signing onto this platform involves endorsing it. In a pure, objective policy analysis, we may or may not choose to run with some of its specific planks. But we also understand that politics matter as much as rational, technocratic policy. We think that the Reclaim Rent Control coalition is a worthy effort that will allow for exploring a better Rent Stabilization Act—which can make housing more affordable for more people, especially when coupled with building more housing.

I testified in support of the renewal and expansion of the Rent Stabilization Act at the bill’s hearing in November. I said then, “Segregationist land-use policies, not rent control, are housing supply’s foremost enemy.” Further:

“Lashing out against rent stabilization takes valuable energy away from a much more constructive mission: adding supply, particularly in affluent, high-opportunity parts of the city like Rock Creek West, Near Northwest, and Capitol Hill. There, we have allowed a valorization of “community character”—and our 2006 Comprehensive Plan is largely responsible for this—to stop development, resulting in a warped and unfair distribution of the housing that does get built here.”

This is, in essence, our housing program. We want to focus intensely on ending exclusionary land-use practices in parts of the city that should be contributing to housing its residents, but haven’t. But doing so doesn’t mean ignoring or shying away from other policies, even if they aren’t traditionally “GGWash-y.”

Because the Rent Stabilization Act is up for renewal in 2020, it’s a prominent issue that’s on the table right now, with distinct points for engagement through the legislative process. We’re looking forward to participating in the Reclaim Rent Control coalition to the extent of our ability, and are grateful for the opportunity to be involved.