Rent Control

An excellent article on TCS about rent control. What's harmful about rent control?

Rent control fails to actually assist those groups -- the poor and the elderly -- it was ostensibly designed to help...

There is no way -- short of an entire new bureaucracy -- to efficiently, fairly, or accurately assess tenants who are elderly, disabled, or 'low or moderate' income, those individuals generally identified as being most in need of protection.

Cities with rent-regulated housing have a great disparity in the rent levels between rent controlled units and market rate units.

Rent control limits, rather than increases, the supply of affordable housing.

Related to the decline in the market value of buildings put under rent control is the trend of owners to defer maintenance and repairs, since in the face of controlled rents an adequate return on investment is difficult to realize.

Rent regulations serve to discourage home ownership opportunities and the creation of new housing.

You'll have to read the article if you want the details.