Rent control as implemented can only make housing just-as-expensive, and rent control cannot make housing affordable for normal people.
Put a plain 2BR in the Mission at, idk, $1500 a month (which Google tells me is a bit over the US median), and you'll have to hold a lottery to figure out which of the ten thousand families trying to get it, actually get it.
Maybe you don't always have a lottery, maybe the big winners are people who were in the right place at the right time as an accident of history. Either way these people are anything but normal. The normal people are the tens of thousands who can't get an apartment at that price. In the end it fails for the same reason that you can't "solve" poverty by running a state lottery and seeing a "normal" person win.
And even if we don't have a problem with this as inherently inequitable, it's just ... such tiny, tiny, small-scale thinking.
I’m not thinking small. I wonder if a confluence of several efforts would come together and make a real impact. E.g. make it illegal to charge more then x for an apartment evaluated at y. Make it illegal to raise the rent more the x over inflation (also between tenants). Make it illegal buy housing with the intention to sell for profit. County could buy housing with set rent to drive down the market rate. Make it illegal to own a house that stays empty more then x months.
EDIT: I know it might seem unfair if you are a landlord or in the housing speculative market. But heck, you’ve had your chance to play a fair game, and seriously screwed us over. You’ve proven your self unworthy as a player in a fair market to a point that you shouldn’t be allowed to play it.
No this won't work. As I said just let the government provide housing for a reasonable price directly. Private landlords can still make money by undercutting the government but they can't charge more because getting your housing from the government will always be cheaper.
Put a plain 2BR in the Mission at, idk, $1500 a month (which Google tells me is a bit over the US median), and you'll have to hold a lottery to figure out which of the ten thousand families trying to get it, actually get it.
Maybe you don't always have a lottery, maybe the big winners are people who were in the right place at the right time as an accident of history. Either way these people are anything but normal. The normal people are the tens of thousands who can't get an apartment at that price. In the end it fails for the same reason that you can't "solve" poverty by running a state lottery and seeing a "normal" person win.
And even if we don't have a problem with this as inherently inequitable, it's just ... such tiny, tiny, small-scale thinking.