Costs and Benefits of Rent Control

Costs and Benefits of Rent Control
Author: Stephen Malpezzi
Publisher: World Bank Publications
Total Pages: 146
Release: 1990
Genre: Housing
ISBN:

Over the past forty years, rent control has been a feature of housing in Ghana. This study focuses on the housing market in Kumasi, the second largest city in Ghana. The authors examine the characteristics of rent control in force there, and assess the costs and benefits of rent control, on landlords and tenants alike. These controls have been successful in ensuring that housing is very inexpensive for most households, in both absolute terms and in proportion of income devoted to rent. Because of these controls, landlords have been deprived of economic returns from their property. Therefore, they have tended to withdraw stock from renting to use for their own family members and to reduce maintenance. Rent control is not the only constraint on the housing market in Kumasi or in Ghana. This study also describes other supply side and regulatory constraints, including those affecting land, finance, and choice of building design and materials. A number of options for relaxation (decontrol) are studied with the aid of a simple present value model. Along with decontrol of new construction it is recommended that floating up and out of controls over a period of about 5 years, should be considered, along with policy changes to ensure ready supplies of land, finance, and building materials. Finally, building a political consensus behind decontrol is not independent of but is more important than the technical means chosen for decontrol or relaxation.

Rent Control

Rent Control
Author: William Dennis Keating
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 276
Release: 1998
Genre: Law
ISBN:

Rent control, the governmental regulation of the level of payment and tenure rights for rental housing, occupies a small but unique niche within the broad domain of public regulation of markets. The price of housing cannot be regulated by establishing a single price for a given level of quality, as other commodities such as electricity and sugar have been regulated at various times. Rent regulation requires that a price level be established for each individual housing unit, which in turn implies a level of complexity in structure and oversight that is unequaled. Housing provides a sense of security, defines our financial and emotional well-being, and influences our self-definition. Not surprisingly, attempts to regulate its price arouse intense controversy. Residential rent control is praised as a guarantor of affordable housing, excoriated as an indefensible distortion of the market, and both admired and feared as an attempt to transform the very meaning of housing access and ownership. This book provides a thorough assessment of the evolution of rent regulation in North American cities. Contributors sketch rent control's origins, legal status, economic impacts, political dynamics, and social meaning. Case studies of rent regulation in specific North American cities from New York and Washington, DC, to Berkeley and Toronto are also presented. This is an important primer for students, advocates, and practitioners of housing policy and provides essential insights on the intersection of government and markets.

The Invention of Brownstone Brooklyn

The Invention of Brownstone Brooklyn
Author: Suleiman Osman
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 359
Release: 2011-03-09
Genre: History
ISBN: 0199830770

Considered one of the city's most notorious industrial slums in the 1940s and 1950s, Brownstone Brooklyn by the 1980s had become a post-industrial landscape of hip bars, yoga studios, and beautifully renovated, wildly expensive townhouses. In The Invention of Brownstone Brooklyn, Suleiman Osman offers a groundbreaking history of this unexpected transformation. Challenging the conventional wisdom that New York City's renaissance started in the 1990s, Osman locates the origins of gentrification in Brooklyn in the cultural upheavals of the 1960s and 1970s. Gentrification began as a grassroots movement led by young and idealistic white college graduates searching for "authenticity" and life outside the burgeoning suburbs. Where postwar city leaders championed slum clearance and modern architecture, "brownstoners" (as they called themselves) fought for a new romantic urban ideal that celebrated historic buildings, industrial lofts and traditional ethnic neighborhoods as a refuge from an increasingly technocratic society. Osman examines the emergence of a "slow-growth" progressive coalition as brownstoners joined with poorer residents to battle city planners and local machine politicians. But as brownstoners migrated into poorer areas, race and class tensions emerged, and by the 1980s, as newspapers parodied yuppies and anti-gentrification activists marched through increasingly expensive neighborhoods, brownstoners debated whether their search for authenticity had been a success or failure.

Affordable Rental Housing: Making It Part of Europe’s Recovery

Affordable Rental Housing: Making It Part of Europe’s Recovery
Author: Khalid ElFayoumi
Publisher: International Monetary Fund
Total Pages: 97
Release: 2021-05-24
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 151357020X

Many European economies have faced pressure from rental housing affordability that has widened social and economic divergence. While significant country and regional differences exist, this departmental paper finds that in many advanced European economies a large and rising share of low-income renters, the young, and those living in cities is overburdened. In several locations, middle-income groups also increasingly face rental affordability issues.

Flaws and Ceilings

Flaws and Ceilings
Author: Christopher Coyne
Publisher: London Publishing Partnership
Total Pages: 227
Release: 2015-03-27
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0255367023

Price controls across many sectors are currently being hotly debated. New controls in the housing market, more onerous minimum wages, minimum prices for alcohol, and freezes on energy prices are very high up the agenda of most politicians at the moment. Even without any further controls, wages, university fees, railway fares and many financial products already have their prices at least partly determined by politicians rather than by supply and demand in the market. Indeed, barely a sector of the UK economy is unaffected in one way or another by government controls on prices. This book demonstrates why economists do not like price controls and shows why they are widely regarded as being amongst the most damaging political interventions in markets. The authors analyse, in a very readable fashion, the damage they cause. Crucially, the authors also explain why, despite universal criticism from economists, price controls are so popular amongst politicians.

The Wealthy Renter

The Wealthy Renter
Author: Alex Avery
Publisher: Dundurn
Total Pages: 265
Release: 2016-09-10
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1459736486

A National Bestseller! Why be house poor when you can rent rich? “Why rent when you can buy?” More than any other, this phrase captures the overwhelmingly unanimous promotion of home ownership to Canadians. Real estate agents, mortgage brokers, family, friends, and even the government promote ownership as a safe, attractive, and sure-fire path to personal wealth. This one-size-fits-all advice ignores the reality of Canada’s housing market. Canadians deserve better advice. Faced with expensive house prices in a near-zero interest rate world, it’s time Canadians heard the virtues of renting and seriously considered renting as an alternative to home ownership. Real estate analyst Alex Avery insists renting offers a simple, more affordable way to live, plus in Canada’s frenzied housing market, going month-to-month is dramatically lower risk. He claims the reputation of home ownership as a wealth building strategy is unfounded and shows renters how to replace bricks-and-mortar with better investment opportunities.

In Defense of Housing

In Defense of Housing
Author: Peter Marcuse
Publisher: Verso Books
Total Pages: 257
Release: 2024-08-27
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1804294942

In every major city in the world there is a housing crisis. How did this happen and what can we do about it? Everyone needs and deserves housing. But today our homes are being transformed into commodities, making the inequalities of the city ever more acute. Profit has become more important than social need. The poor are forced to pay more for worse housing. Communities are faced with the violence of displacement and gentrification. And the benefits of decent housing are only available for those who can afford it. In Defense of Housing is the definitive statement on this crisis from leading urban planner Peter Marcuse and sociologist David Madden. They look at the causes and consequences of the housing problem and detail the need for progressive alternatives. The housing crisis cannot be solved by minor policy shifts, they argue. Rather, the housing crisis has deep political and economic roots—and therefore requires a radical response.