Protection for Tenants: Rent Control
Q: What is rent control?
A: The words "rent control" apply to laws or governmental regulations that limit the amount of rent or rental increase that the landlords can charge.
Q: How does rent control regulate the amount of rent?
A:
Usually the mayor of the city with rent control appoints a board to administer the law. That board determines how much the annual rent increases will be and whether individual landlords get extra rent increases. Some communities elect the rent control board members directly. Some observers think the elected boards are more independent from landlords.
Sidebar: Ability to Pay Rent control does not consider a tenant's ability to pay. It is not a social welfare program providing subsidies to the tenant. Even in communities with rent control, there are tenants spending too large a percentage of their incomes on rent. Rent control does not make housing affordable for everyone. |
Q: What kinds of rent control laws are there?
A: New York City was the only municipality in the country to retain rent control after the end of World War II. The law there did not permit rent increases without specific permission from an administrative board. Rents could be raised based upon a pass-through of certain expense increases, such as the cost of fuel.
From the late 1960s through 1978 other communities adopted rent control. Most of these laws allow automatic but limited rent increases without any requirement of showing expense increases. Landlords are allowed to petition for larger increases on the basis of major repairs or extraordinarily large expenses that the normal rent increase would not cover. These so-called second-generation rent control laws have prevented some of the large rent increases experienced by tenants in other cities.
Q: What areas of the country have rent control?
A: The District of Columbia and some municipalities in Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, and California have passed rent control ordinances. Some state legislatures have outlawed local rent control ordinances. Perhaps 10 percent of the tenants in the country are covered by some form of rent control.
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