This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Thursday, March 21st, 2019. I'm Caleb Brown.

Oregon has passed statewide rent control. So if we follow the money who benefits from these

restrictions on rental properties. Cato's Ryan Bourne says some of the big

beneficiaries are people who already own homes who do not plan on renting them at all.

Describe to me what Oregon has done with statewide rent control.

Well Governor Kate Brown last week signed legislation for the first statewide rent control law in the whole of the United States.

Ostensibly this is made up of three major components.

The first is to cap statewide rent increases to a maximum of 7% per year above the consumer price

index which is currently running around 3%. So let's say for arguments, capping statewide rent increases for rentable

accommodation to a maximum of around 10% per year. The second part is new housing

construction would be exempt from that cap for the first 15 years

from when the controls are introduced and the third component is that in order

to improve economic security for tenants, the legislation effectively

outlaws no cause evictions except during the first year of your tenancy. So after that first year, landlords can

end your tenancy only for qualified reasons such as wanting to convert the property, repair or renovate the property, sell it, or have their family move into it.

Now that component is arguably more important than the rent control proposal itself,

but I think combined what the legislators were aiming for here is to really stop what is known as economic eviction.

That's landlords in effect, removing tenants through raising rents very, very quickly,

or pushing them out for reasons other than wanting to use the property in a different way for themselves.

Okay, so for people who own property that want to get the most value out of owning that property.

Does this affect them that much?

Well, I think it affects people on the margin.

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