Few Low-Rent Units with Rent Control
The concept of shadow markets offers a reasonable explanation of why the results of rent controls are so perverse and why they lead to a sense of helplessness and panic in a rent-controlled population. Although rent controls are widely believed to lower rents, data I have collected from eighteen North American cities show that the advertised rents of available apartments in rent-regulated cities are dramatically higher than they are in cities without rent control. In cities without rent control, the available units are almost evenly distributed above and below the census median. In rent-controlled cities most available units are priced well above the median. In other words, inhabitants in cities without rent control have a far easier time finding moderately priced rental units than do inhabitants in rent-controlled cities. This is because tenants in the regulated sector tend to hoard their apartments, forcing everyone else to shop only in the shadow market. Thus, rent control is the cause of the widely perceived “housing crisis” in rent-controlled cities.
Price Controls and Commodity Shortages
Standard supply-and-demand theory shows that when the government fixes prices, a gap opens up between supply and demand. This is usually illustrated by two opposing curves, representing the “marginal propensity to sell” (supply) and the “marginal propensity to buy” (demand). Consumers, of course, are inclined to buy more as prices fall and less as prices rise. Sellers act in an opposite manner, offering more as prices rise and less as prices fall. At one point–and one point only–the interests of buyers and sellers will intersect. This is the “market-clearing price,” the point at which, given current economic circumstances, the desires of both groups are optimized. Prices, of course, do not automatically come to rest at some market-clearing level. A continuing discovery process occurs. Either buyers or sellers may achieve a temporary monopoly due to geography or other circumstances. Lack of information may cause either buyers or sellers to accept a price that is unfavorable to them. But, lacking government interference, the actions of buyers and sellers always push prices toward a market-clearing level. [AOA: Or toward a “fair market” value.]
The effect of price regulation is to keep supply and demand permanently separated. If the government holds prices above market value, usually in an attempt to appease suppliers, the result is an economic surplus. For instance, since the 1920s, the federal government has maintained price supports for many agricultural commodities. The result has been chronic farm surpluses. Price controls, designed to benefit consumers, are much more common. The oil price controls from 1971 to 1981 that resulted in a decade-long “energy crisis” provide insights into the rent control issue.
Oil price controls had led to gas lines and rationing at the pump during two brief episodes in 1973 and 1979. But for the most part, there was no visible shortage and supplies continued uninterrupted for most of the decade. What happened to the shortages that should have been produced by price controls? In retrospect, the answer was simple. As Horwich and Weimer noted, the federal government was able to impose price controls only on domestic sources of supply. This created a shortage of domestic oil. But the country continually filled this gap by importing more oil.
Imports constituted only 25 percent of the nation’s supply when Nixon imposed price controls in 1971. In two short years, this portion climbed to nearly 33 percent. OPEC countries were emboldened to interrupt supplies briefly in 1973 and then quadruple the price.
Unfortunately, Congress responded in 1976 by “punishing” the oil companies, dramatically reducing the price and extending price controls indefinitely. As a result, imports rose to more than 50 percent by 1979, despite an extensive government publicity campaign against purchasing importing oil. Congress even abetted the process surreptitiously by expanding “oil entitlements,” a program that supplied small refineries with subsidized imported crude oil, supposedly to help them compete against the major oil refiners. By 1979,America’s excess demand had stretched world supplies so tight that a small interruption of supplies, caused by the outbreak of the Iran-Iraq War, was enough to set off another “gas shortage.” When President Ronald Reagan removed domestic price controls in 1981, the resulting surge of supply was enough to send world oil prices into a free fall. The “energy crisis” vanished almost overnight.
Horwich and Weimer show that the shadow market concept explains these events. Prices of only part of the oil supply, that produced domestically, were controlled. To make up for the resulting shortages, consumers had to turn to foreign-produced oil. Because of the excess demand, world oil prices rose rapidly. Only when domestic supplies were restored did world oil prices tumble. Over a decade, oil price controls accomplished almost nothing in lowering prices to consumers, but they did cause havoc by creating rapid shifts in the world market.
Shortages and Hoarding
One reason the disadvantages of oil price controls soon became apparent was that the hoarding of this commodity was only partially feasible. Hoarding occurs when consumers buy supplies for future use as well as present consumption.
When uncertainty about future supplies becomes general, consumers will begin to stockpile. During the 1979 “gas shortage,” for example, entertainer John Denver was reported to be building two 100-gallon gas tanks on hisColoradoestate. Ordinary motorists reacted the same way by “topping off” their tanks at gas stations. TheU.S.government hoarded oil with the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. Although hoarding may benefit individuals or countries, it also puts an upward pressure on prices. When people buy for future use as well as present consumption, supplies will be tighter and prices on the shadow market will be driven even higher. Or, in the case of oil, if rationing-by-waiting is already in effect, gas lines will stretch even longer.
But the ability to hoard depends on the logistics and durability of a product. Oil is consumed only once and must be stored in facilities that are not easily or inexpensively obtainable. During a famine, food can be hoarded, but it must be stored under special conditions to avoid spoilage.
Housing is one of the most durable commodities. A well-constructed building can last more than 100 years; many buildings inEuropeare centuries old. Housing can be consumed today and still be consumed 10 or 20 years later. And with government holding prices low through rent control, a tenant who holds a rent-controlled apartment has a strong incentive to stay in it his or her entire life, even passing it on to descendants. Hoarding of housing is not only possible; it can become the natural order of things.
Of course if the laws allow a landlord to charge a higher rent to a new tenant, the landlord may want to evict a low-paying tenant. But this only leads to strong anti-eviction laws, a staple in all rent-controlled communities that soon makes it difficult or impossible to get rid of even the most destructive or delinquent tenants.
As a commodity, then, rental housing makes an ideal target for conveying certain benefits to a portion of the population. Because of durability of housing, rent control can go on bestowing benefits to the same minority – or even a majority of a municipality – for a very long period of time. It is the individuals who are forced into the shadow market – usually newcomers or people who want to change apartments – who suffer the consequences.
William Tucker is the author of The Excluded Americans: Homelessness and Housing Policies –
(Regnery), and Zoning, Rent Control, and Affordable Housing – (Cato). Reprinted with permission of The Cato Institute, a public policy research organization — a think tank – dedicated to the principles of individual liberty, limited government, free markets and peace. Its scholars and analysts conduct independent, nonpartisan research on a wide range of policy issues. For more information, visit www.cato.org.