> Rent control is the opposite, it makes things worse long term but better short term...

In general, rent control regulation is SUPER, SUPER BAD and absolutely will turn everything to shit.

However, local conditions and the particulars of what is being called rent control matter A LOT.

The only rent control laws I'm intimately familiar with are those in San Francisco. I'm also somewhat familiar with the history that caused such regulations to be enacted in major cities in the state.

About the regs in SF:

* The rent control regulation in SF is more-correctly called "rent stabilization". Once all original tenants (termed "master tenants" in the regs) on the lease move out, the covered unit can be rented at any price. Until all master tenants move out, the base rent for the unit may only be increased by 60% of the Urban CPI in the Bay Area. Many other costs may be passed through at 100%.

* SF's Rent Stabilization only applies to residential buildings built BEFORE 1979. [0] Construction NEWER THAN 1979 IS NOT COVERED by Rent Stabilization, unless the owner of the building chooses to be covered by it. [1] Commercial non-residential buildings are NOT COVERED by SF's Rent Stabilization.

* It is super duper not permitted for a particular human to be a "master tenant" in more than one apartment. If you do this, are discovered, and someone complains to the Rent Board, you will quickly find yourself paying whatever the landlord cares to charge for all of those apartments.

About the history of Rent Control in California:

Two words: "Proposition Thirteen".

Wind back to the mid-to-late 1970s in California. Rents are spiraling upwards, out of control, and have been for years. Folks are getting extremely worried about being able to pay the rent. Proposition 13 is proposed as a solution... landlords SWEAR that they can't do anything BUT increase the rents because property valuations are SOARING. If only Californians could vote to limit annual property tax increases to no more than 2% per year (unless that property changes hands... except for a "few" exceptions), then landlords would finally be able to keep rents in control. Mix those promises in with a few commercials and full-page ads about "How will granny keep her house if she can't pay the tax man??" and Prop 13 passes.

Well, some time passes and rents keep spiraling out of control. Turns out the landlords were full of shit. So, to match landlords' new, shiny "Property Tax Control", major cities enacted various Rent Control and Rent stabilization ordinances.

Two things I super want to point out here: Prop 13 applies to ALL property in the state, residential, non-residential, commercial, and non-commercial built at ANY time. SF's Rent Stabilization regs ONLY apply to residential property that's being rented to tenants, and ONLY buildings built before 1979. SF's rent control regs are absolutely NOT why SF has been failing and continues to utterly fail to build even a tiny fraction of the housing required to meet local demand.

[0] Nor does it apply to buildings being used as single-family homes, nor to many-to-most condominiums.

[1] It's my understanding that this has happened exactly once. Trinity Place is a very large apartment complex. In order to build it, a much smaller motel-style pre-1979 apartment building with like ten or twenty apartments needed to be demolished. The owner of the land and the building reached an agreement with the city to forever subject ten or twenty units in his new building to the Rent Stabilization regs so as to provide the residents of the motel-style building (and any and all future tenants of those units) with 1:1 replacements for the Rent Stabilized apartments. All other apartments in the big-ass complex are "market rate" apartments.