Photo by Daniel Lobo/Flickr

Economists agree, rent control doesn’t work. It makes housing less profitable and disincentivizes both the construction of new builds and the maintenance of existing stock. While it may make some tenants’ lives easier, rent control reduces the quality and availability of housing in the long term. Ultimately, rent control leads to overcrowding, disrepair, and uninhabitability. In the words of Swedish economist Assar Lindbeck: “rent control appears to be the most efficient technique presently known to destroy a city—except for bombing”.

This is economics 101, basic supply-and-demand stuff. If we were to get rid of rent control across the country the market would produce abundant housing and affordability would be restored.

Or so the economists say.

The trouble is Canada’s history undermines the wisdom of these so-called experts.

Experiments with rent control go all the way back to the National Housing Act of 1944, but rent control laws didn’t become part of the national landscape until 1975 when the federal government pressured the provinces into adopting them as part of a national anti-inflation program.

Imposed from above during an economic emergency, rent control played a significant role both in curbing out-of-control inflation and solving the housing crisis Canada was experiencing at the time. A combination of robust rent control and concurrent investments in public housing saw housing prices fall by as much as 30 percent in real terms between 1975 and 1978.

Rent control didn’t cause a housing crisis, it helped stop one.

But its success made it a target, and despite its effectiveness rent control was immediately made into a site of political contest. For 50 years rent control has been attacked........

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