Is it time to control rent?

The Indicator from Planet Money

NPR

Business

4.7 • 9.5K Ratings

🗓️ 31 January 2022

⏱️ 9 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Rent control is one of the most unpopular policies among economists and policy reporters. But current housing shortages have one long-time critic rethinking her position.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	NPR.
0:07.0	Rent.
0:12.8	For a lot of people, it is getting harder and harder to pay.
0:16.3	The eviction moratorium ended last year, and it's estimated that roughly 10 million Americans
0:21.1	are now behind on their rent.
0:23.5	Some cities have seen rents rise 30 or even 40 percent in the last year.
0:27.9	And this has some cities and states considering policies and laws to cap rent or limit rent
0:32.6	increases.
0:33.6	Basically, to put in place some kind of rent control policy.
0:37.9	Now we should say economists generally do not like rent control.
0:41.6	The reason?
0:42.6	If rent is a market problem, rent control not only does not solve the underlying issue,
0:47.7	it can actually make it worse.
0:50.7	This is the indicator from Planet Money.
0:52.4	I'm Stacey Manick-Smith.
0:53.8	Today on the show, rent control.
0:56.2	That cities are trying, why economists have traditionally disliked it, and why one reporter
1:01.2	has recently changed her mind.
1:09.5	Jerusalem Demsys is a policy writer at Fox.com and co-host of the Weeds podcast.
1:14.8	And she says she recently changed her mind about rent control.
1:18.9	Kind of.
1:19.9	Jerusalem, thank you so much for joining us.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from NPR, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of NPR and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.