By Jeffrey Dorfman at Forbes

June 16, 2016

Residents of many U.S. cities will be quick to tell you that rents are too high and rising too fast. If you want to buy rather than rent, the story, if anything, gets worse. In Manhattan, prices of $1000 per square foot are becoming normal for ordinary apartments, with luxury units costing far, far more. Given the difficulty buying in many cities, rental options have been rising in importance even for households with incomes well above average. And because of this demand, rental prices in many desirable locations have reached the point where cries, protests, and petitions for rent control are spreading rapidly. More local rent control ordinances, however, would be exactly the wrong thing to do. Rent control masks the symptom of the problem, but can actually make the lack of affordable housing worse.

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