By Kerry Jackson | The Boston Herald OPINION | December 9, 2025
Los Angeles is one of more than a dozen California cities with rent-control laws, and by no coincidence, is one of the most unaffordable places to live. The City Council recently approved a proposal that gives owners more leeway to raise rents. It’s by no means a bold plan. It nibbles around the edges and won’t increase housing supply in any perceptible way.
In updating the municipal Rent Stabilization Ordinance, the city will allow owners to increase rent by 4 percent yearly on housing regulated by the law, a single percentage point higher than the previous ceiling, which expires at the end of next June. The formula was based on the consumer price index. In the past, owners have been allowed to raise rent by 100 percent of the CPI, but now can increase it by 90 percent of CPI.
Another change will block owners from increasing rents by 1 percent when they provide gas or electricity. Those that furnished both had been able to increase rent by 2 percent.
There were no rent increases during the COVID pandemic. For tenant advocates, that wasn’t enough. They demanded reform more favorable to renters. A year ago, Keep LA Housed wrote an open letter to the City Council, demanding “a formula that sets the annual allowable rent increase at 60 percent of the change in the consumer price index, or 3 percent, whichever is lower, with no utility pass-through and no exemptions for small landlords.”
Apparently, tenant advocates aren’t aware that property owners are not charities. From the small family-owned operations that have as few as one unit to the corporations that commit considerable portions of their capital to housing, owners need to make a reasonable profit on their holdings.
Housing in Los Angeles is expensive, not because of property owners’ greed but because the supply cannot keep up with demand. There is a solution. Citing the Reason Foundation’s report regarding the success of repealing rent control in Argentina, economist Alex Tabarrok noted “that the biggest recent experiment we have in rent control is that removing rent control increased supply and REDUCED prices.”
Numerous other works show that Tabarrok’s claim is on the mark. And “nearly all economists agree, based on volumes of research, that rent control does more harm than good,” according to the Freakonomics team.
So, how does rent control do harm? For one, it creates shortages.
Read the full article here.