Rent Control Keeps Prices Down for Everyone
blog.lareviewofbooks.orgIt's fascinating that people think like this. Prices went up, so supply and demand don't work, and it's "speculators" that are to blame.
Speculators in housing markets are usually (not always, but frequently) either looking for short-term flips, or are foreign investors looking for a place to park cash outside of their home countries.
When rent control was removed here in Cambridge about 20 years ago, not only did rents go up in town, but also in surrounding cities, as people moved out of Cambridge.
The author is a member of “LA Tenants Union”: https://lareviewofbooks.org/contributor/julian-smith-newman/
Thomas Sowell - Basic Economics
An early chapter addresses this exact issue.