In Seattle, where tenant activists say some renters complain their rent has increased by as much as 150 percent, two city council members last week hosted a packed town hall meeting to debate whether to impose rent controls — a move that could put the city at odds with the state.
"Rents are higher than they've ever been. Wages are declining. There's a huge, huge gap between wages and housing costs," says Peter Dreier, former housing director for the City of Boston and chairman of the urban and environmental policy department at Occidental College in Los Angeles.
Even in cities that have had rent regulations for decades, such as New York, the issue of affordable rents remains contentious. New York tenant groups cried foul when Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo and state lawmakers last month extended the state's rent-stabilization laws to maintain controls on more than a million apartments, while allowing landlords to raise rents as much as they want on apartments that became vacant.
Advocates argue government controls are necessary to protect middle- and low-income renters from price gouging. But the apartment industry and some economists argue rent regulations don't work and only serve to drive up the cost of housing in tight markets.
"It doesn't serve the people who need it most," said Jim Lapides, spokesman for the National Multifamily Housing Council (NMHC), an advocacy organization for the apartment industry based in Washington, D.C. "It hurts mobility," he said, because people who have rent-controlled apartments tend to hold on to them.
One thing all agree on: There simply isn't enough housing stock to accommodate the ever-growing number of renters in many of the nation's most congested cities, particularly on the East and West coasts.
In New York, rent control laws date to right after World War I, when there was a pent-up demand for housing. With rental housing at a premium, landlords took advantage, often jacking up rent as much as 100 percent. The concept of rental control was revived nationwide during World War II, when housing construction was put on hold.
In an effort to keep families in their homes, the federal government imposed rent controls. Those controls were lifted after the war, and only a handful of states still allowed them. But by the 1960s and '70s, tenants began to push back.
It's difficult to gauge how many cities still have some form of rent control on the books, though estimates run into the hundreds.
Massachusetts allowed rent control — only pricy Boston and nearby Cambridge and Brookline had it — until 1994, when voters narrowly voted against it. In 2008, California voters defeated Prop 98, which would have phased out rent control in the state.
Thirty-five states, including Washington state, have laws specifically outlawing or "pre-empting" rent control. Eleven states have no rent control or preemption laws.
In Seattle, where the median rent is $1,600 for a one-bedroom apartment, Mayor Ed Murray, a Democrat, declared affordable housing an "emergency" situation and appointed a housing task force. So rent control is being talked about again.
The Washington Legislature isn't likely to pass rent control legislation, though, said Valdez, who contends that's a good thing.
Rent-controlled apartments are rare and apply to buildings constructed in New York City before 1947. This law limits the amount of rent a landlord may charge a tenant and restricts the landlord's ability to evict. Rent-stabilization laws cover apartment buildings built after 1947 and before 1974 and provide protections to tenants. Rent increases are set by a board made up of nine members, including two tenant and two landlord representatives.
In 2012, a New York landlord took his case to the Supreme Court. James Harmon owned a brownstone on the Upper West Side. One of his long-term tenants had lived in a one-bedroom, rent-stabilized apartment since 1976. She paid $1,000 a month — far below the market value. Harmon argued that rent control amounted to an unconstitutional "taking" of his property. The Supreme Court declined to hear his case.
But Siegel, who ran for office on a housing development platform, said that while rent control can help some people, he's no longer convinced that it is the solution.