No on Pasadena’s Measure H Nov. 8

Other than basic laws of supply and demand — and even that gets iffy — there are few things almost all economists across the American political spectrum agree on.

One of them is rent control. Economists are nearly universally against it. Not because they are mean-spirited people who want The Man to stick it to Jane and Joe Six-Pack. Because it doesn’t work.

It especially doesn’t work in anything but the very short run for the very folks it is supposed to help out: renters.

The imposition of price controls on landlords immediately decreased the supply of rental housing in every American city in which it has been experimented with. Developers don’t want to build when they can’t make a living doing so. Owners don’t want the headache of dealing with the middleman that is rent control boards. Secret deals get made, off the books. The turnover of housing is dramatically decreased when the lucky few who get locked in at low rates see no reason to move, often for decades.

The latest Southern California city to look at implementing rent control is Pasadena, where voters will decide the fate of Measure H on Nov. 8.

Pasadenans should vote no on H. We understand the knee-jerk appeal during a time of huge hikes in housing costs — a function, again, of not enough available apartments in the city and throughout the region. But Pasadena renters, as everywhere, are already protected by state law, which provides annual limits on rent increases at 5% plus inflation, and requires landlords to have “just cause” to evict tenants. Measure H is a wild overreach that absurdly creates an 11-member, highly paid — why? other citizen volunteers on the city’s myriad commissions don’t get paid but small stipends — unelected rent-control board the city attorney acknowledges would work “with no oversight by the City Council, City Manager, or City Attorney” to determine rent adjustments, which in any case would be limited to, for some reason, ¾ of the inflation rate. What incentive would apartment owners have to build new ones in a time of high inflation? Twenty-six city employees would be needed to staff the rent-control board. Landlords, including momand-pops, would pay for it all. Don’t get suckered by sham economics, Pasadenans. Vote no on Measure H.