BY JOSHUA WOOD AND BOB WARD
Special to The Sacramento Bee
July 17,2018
Sacramento faces a serious affordable housing problem. The Bee editorial board calls on the mayor, city council, developers and SEIU-backed tenants’ organizations to set aside their differences and forge a compromise that takes aggressive action (“The mayor has a plan to fix the housing crisis. Now he needs help,” Editorials, July 16)…
…But the one action guaranteed to fail is imposing a cap on rents.
Whatever you call it, this is rent control. That’s why economists of all political persuasions agree that capping rents leads to a decline in the quantity and quality of rental housing. A recent Stanford University study of rent control in San Francisco, for example, found that it reduced the housing supply and drove up rents citywide.
The stakes are too high to pursue policies that have been shown to fail. We look forward to working with the mayor, city council, tenant groups and community leaders to find real solutions. On this we all agree.
Joshua Wood is CEO of Sacramento Region Business Association and can be contacted at joshua@regionbusiness.org. Bob Ward is business manager of IBEW Local 340 and can be contacted at bward@ibewlocal340.org. Both are members of the Citizens for Affordable Housing coalition.