Biden Admin Wants to Cap Rent Increases at 5% Nationwide
Rent control hurts renters, ruins neighborhoods.
The Washington Post reports that President Joe Biden will announce a plan to cap rent increases at 5% nationwide in Nevada on Tuesday.
Congress would need to approve the plan, so it’s unlikely it will get past the House.
Here are some points:
- Landlords lose tax benefits if they raise rent higher than 5%.
- It only applies to those who have over 50 units.
- Won’t cover under-construction units to not discourage people from building new housing.
Biden hinted at the plan at the debate. He expanded on it slightly during a NATO news conference.
“It’s time to get things back in order a little bit,” Biden said at the time. “For example, if I’m reelected, we’re going to make sure that rents are capped at 5 percent increase — corporate rents, for apartments and the like, and homes, are limited to 5 percent.”
You cannot treat every area the same. States don’t even have static cost of living stats.
The rent in Chicago is nothing like the rent in the smaller suburbs.
So why does rent go up?
Supply and demand. Market conditions. Property improvements. Rising property taxes.
New York City tried rent control. It fell on its face because in June 2023, the city told those rent-stabilized apartment landlords that they could raise rent:
On Wednesday, the city’s Rent Guidelines Board (RGB) ordered that annual adjustments for one-year leases starting in October 2023 on New York City’s roughly 1 million rent-stabilized apartments could rise by 3 percent and 5 percent for two-year leases.
The board cited rising inflation, which was 6.1 percent in New York City, as a reason for keeping rent increases low for tenants. That level of inflation nevertheless means that real rents are falling for building owners who are also seeing their own costs rise faster than inflation.
An RGB report from earlier this year found that owners’ operating costs rose by 8.1 percent.
The board’s effort to split the baby on rent increases doesn’t seem to have appeased anyone.
Tenant advocates were furious that the board didn’t accede to their demand for a zero percent rent increase.
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Comments
Yes, lets remove more units from the market, seize them with eminent domain, and give them to illegal aliens!
Sorta like what Venezuela did. Now, half* of Venezuela has migrated to the US.
*Over exaggerated to prove a point.
NO. That is not the plan so stop that rumor. Can’t pay the increase in taxes and city fees so have to sell to the only buyer which is the Government and who are they going to put into those places but illegals taking up the hotels. This is not the plan. Stop that.
He’s REALLY trying to break up the country.
I guess we all can agree that Obama broke up the country, and since Biden is actually Obama’s third term, Obama is continuing the trend.
There are plenty of insane ideas, but this one tops them all. This is one of the areas of small business ownership. It would just force these owners out. The reason for rising rents is you Xiden! FJB
“a plan to cap rent increases at 5% nationwide in Nevada on Tuesday”
“The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined” (No. 45)
So Old Joe will have no difficulty pointing to the specific text in the Constitution giving fedgov this “power?”
See my comment below. It appears that this would be relying entirely on the taxing power.
It is easier to control one large business than it is to control a large number of small businesses in the same sector. Keep beating up the small owner until they decide to bail out and the bigger owner buys them out… until the whole market is a “housing authority” with all the trappings that go with it….
That’s the plan.
The retards never learn. When you stop landlords from making a profit, you constrict supply and when prices cannot increase at the same rate as the costs increase then people stop doing business. Rent control is a really good way to make sure people can’t get a place to live at any price.
Okay… someone needs to clear up the definition of “Interstate” commerce again for me please.
It seems a lot like the EPA and navigable waters to me.
I don’t think this could be shoehorned into interstate commerce even under the current interpretation. And I think the Dem lawyers understand that, because at least from what’s cited in this post it looks like they’re not proposing regulation, but rather incentives to encourage voluntary compliance. “Landlords lose tax benefits if they raise rent higher than 5%.” That means they have to be offering benefits in the first place; then they can say you’re not eligible if you raise your rents more than we say.
If so, that doesn’t need to rely on the interstate commerce clause, it can rely directly on the taxing clause. Congress has the power to lay taxes, and it can set pretty much whatever rules it likes for them. So it can say “We can’t make you do X, but if you do it you get a discount on your taxes, and if you don’t then you pay in full”.
There is nothing at all in the constitution to say that the taxes Congress lays must be fair and equitable, and indeed they’re already far from that, so what’s a bit more?
Interesting analysis.
Your interpretation of these proposed laws would avoid an adverse ruling by the Supreme Court on the ultimate issue: “Is rent control an unlawful taking under the 5th and 14th Amendments of the Constitution?”
If everything in post-constitutional America wasn’t reduced to legalism, our leaders would recognize rent control as an illegal taking as well as unjustly interfering in a legitimate contract. But the larger the scope of legalism, the smaller the scope of morals—concepts like honesty, decency, fairness. Another casualty of “progressive” leftism.
Your analysis fits within how the SC found ObamaCare to be constitutional — it was a tax. The tax powers of the Congress are not constrained much at all by the Constitution.
Especially not after the 16th Amendment. Which was kinda the point of it.
The 16th didn’t do very much. All it did was enable the income tax to apply to income derived from property, such as rent, interest, and dividends. The bulk of income tax is on earned income, and there was never any doubt that Congress could tax that.
And that was only because the supreme court at the time ruled that without an amendment it couldn’t apply to such income; I doubt today’s court would have ruled the same way.
Gee, let me think about where rent control (or price controls in general) worked. Argentina? No. Venezuela? No. The US in 1971? No. Oops!
In fact, the Supreme Court should revisit rent control–it seems clear to me that it’s an unconstitutional “taking” of private property. The last time the Supreme Court visited the issue, they used “rational basis” review (rather than “strict scrutiny”) and concluded that it was OK to pretend that the “public interest” should be taken into account when the government decides to meddle in free markets. The decision was wrong then and it is wrong now.
In short, rent control is both economically illiterate and unconstitutional. Time to challenge it.
“In many cases rent control appears to be the most efficient technique presently known to destroy a city—except for bombing.”
– Assar Lindbeck, Swedish Economist and Socialist
“It only applies to those who have over 50 units.”
LLCs cost about $50 to register. There’s no scarcity, either.
Wouldn’t it be great if the government bloat and rapacity didn’t force citizens to find legalistic mechanisms to protect their property?
But it’s so much fun to watch the government expend hundreds of thousands of self-righteous, sweaty, man hours on laws to, say, outlaw “assault weapons,” then after they are passed with much screaming and shouting, all you have to do is… change the names on your guns.
The Rent is too Damn High.
https://youtu.be/mBF_JR0VLBk
Price controls… how about NO? Get gov’t out of the damn way. No tinkering or nudges much less direct interference between the parties of consensual contracts.
Price controls always do the opposite of what’s intended, namely nothing’s available at any price.
Corporate greed controls are next.
Courts have supported similar for local and/or state regulations. It won’t work for national.
But we’re not supposed to mention that rent control is socialistic. That would be “uncivil” —at least according to the Democrat Party. Just like yesterday when some brainless “expert” (on some DNC State Propaganda channel, might have been MSNBC) complained that President Trump was not living up to calls for unity because he still referred to trials against him as witch hunts. There’s the filthy Dem definition of toning down the rhetoric. They get to keep doing what they do, but our side is supposed to cease all criticism of it. To hell with that!
Can he cap immigration too?
Communists hate the free market, don’t they?
Just call it Nixonian price controls.
This should be seen as the desperation move it is. Support among the young is soft, so the campaign is trying to attract them by out Bernie-ing Bernie. I doubt it will work. It’s too obviously an unconstitutional Hail Mary.
This kind of thing is what you get from an imploding campaign.
Unconstitutional why? A taking without just compensation?
But aren’t local governments equally bound by this (Kelo was done at the state or local level and SCOTUS still made the binding ruling on it) and if rent control in NYC is allowed, why would this not be?
It’s unconstitutional because it goes beyond the enumerated powers of the federal government.
He’ll never get it through congress so this is just another lie told to gain votes from idiots.
In cities where there are more tenants than owners, tenants control the ballot box. They often vote for local politicians who support pro-tenant policies. But real estate markets are very local. Even within same city, different locations can have their own distinct sub-market. It makes no sense to try to regulate that from Washington DC.
Since when has “sense” ever entered the conversation?
Makes no sense to try and regulate that, at all.
The history of “wage and price controls” is worse than “checkered”
So is inability to raise the rent sufficiently a “good cause” for good-cause eviction? (another exploitation of landlords that Biden likes)
“Owner desires premises”
The left should (but won’t) accept that landlords are not the enemy. You don’t need a landlord. In most places, you are free to sleep under the stars or in your car, or in your own house if someone will give you one.
They’re not the enemy, and the left knows it. They’re just someone they can exploit, and they are great at exploiting anyone to get what they want.
“I’m going to ask where you think you have any authority to do that?”
/The Constitution
lefty is the destructive force aldolph showed us they are
donttttt give in to them
This and allowing multi family housing into single family neighborhoods
LEFTY IS THE BULLDOZER THAT NEEDS ITS TIRES FLATTENED
Bulldozers don’t have tires
Yeah, we know. But it makes as much sense as anything else the Left says.
The right response was “Forget it. He’s on a roll.”
guess I got off track there
but just for the sake of discussion
some do!
I give up. Let’s have supreme executive authority determined by strange women lying in ponds distributing swords.
Moistened bints.
The federal government has no such power. Yes .. I know that they think they’ll do it through the CDC, claiming that it’s a health emergency to have people thrown onto the street coughing … but in reality the feds have no point to even entertain the idea that they are able to do such a thing as national rent control.
And all that is on top of the fact that EVERYONE knows that rent control is insane and destroys the area it’s applied to.
CRAZY. But, this is what happens when you have communists in power. Commies gonna commie.
I can’t tell from your comment whether or not you are aware that during COVID, it was precisely the CDC that issued those outlandish “regulations” establishing an eviction moratorium.
Of course I knew.
Boy, you have that little faith in me?
I also knew that the SCOTUS eventually declared it un-Constitutional, but that wouldn’t stop them from running the whole program again, with a couple of pronouns changed, and to be happy with the years it takes for the SCOTUS to finally get it back before them.
By what authority would the federal govt have the ability to regulate rent nation wide? Nothing like pouring gas on the housing crisis.
By what authority did the federal govt mandate that we have to buy gasoline mixed with ethanol?
By what authority did the federal govt impose all of the thousands of mandates in Obamacare?
We no longer live in a nation of laws.
Is this five percent in aggregate or five percent for each property?
Price Controls ALWAYS fail. Spectacularly.
The inevitable result is shortages, since producers have no incentive, and then there’s a black market followed by the collapse of the price control scheme and then massive price hikes.