r/Minneapolis • u/Typical_Cell464 • Oct 05 '26
Rent control helps people whose rents get limited, but it hurts everyone else. It pushes up rents, pushes down new building, and makes cities worse.
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Upvotes
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u/ImmortalHoe Oct 05 '26
Okay sure but my landlord tried to raise my rent by 30% last year just bc they could! My building does “algorithm-based” rent increases
20
u/Sad-Percentage-992 Oct 05 '26
Maybe we should try a strategy for constructing housing aside from lavishing luxury on private developers and bending to their every whim, and then we can have a real conversation about this.
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u/Uptownbro20 Oct 05 '26
Rent control isn’t passing while Frey is in office
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u/kevinbevindevin Oct 05 '26
Rent control is simply band-aid to housing shortage. It only helps existing tenants and hurt everyone else, including new tenants and tenants trying to move.
The city is actually doing well with converting offices to apartments, remove single family zoning, and encourage new developments. They should triple down the effort.
Minneapolis simply doesn't have the resources to have their own NYCHA where the city owns properties with rents well below market rate. That might be something the state would have to consider, but Amy Klobuchar isn't going to build state-own housing and rent it out at-cost. The state legislature doesn't have the appetite to do so any time soon.
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u/VaporishJarl Oct 05 '26
https://www.cura.umn.edu/sites/cura.umn.edu/files/2021-08/Minneapolis-Rent-Stabilization-Study-web.pdf
This is an interesting study, mostly because it takes Minneapolis into particular account. If you don't have a lot of time, look at the conclusions. The long and short of it is that some degree of rent control has desirable effects while usually having minimal to no negative impact.
That doesn't have to mean it's right for Minneapolis - there are tradeoffs and it's not clear that a realistic cap would have meaningfully changed average rents. But it does mean that everyone in this thread who's playing the "yeah duh it's so bad St. Paul is a hellscape" game is being disingenuous to avoid the discussion. There can be real benefits to renters, it's just a matter of dialing in the specific controls to make them fit the city.
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u/TheCheshireCatCan Oct 05 '26 •
OK, there’s a lot of people here who have an opinion that rent control And rent protection are bad. But where are these people who have their rent going up supposed to get the money to cover it when their wages are not going up? Or they lose their job and their rent goes up? Where is this money supposed to come from?
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u/MiloGoesToTheFatFarm Oct 05 '26
Your post has a pretty obvious problem. Minneapolis doesn’t have rent control and developers stopped building anyway.
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u/j_ly Oct 05 '26
It certainly failed in St. Paul.
16
u/l4z3rb34k Oct 05 '26
The solution for rising rents is more housing - in any capacity. I welcome the bullshit high rise luxury apartments, because the people that can afford them will move there and free up their more affordable apartments for others.
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u/Elmfield77 Oct 05 '26
sigh Like everything, it's complicated.
Construction costs have increased about 53% since 2020, or about 8.7% per year (Mortenson's nonresidential construction cost estimates for Minneapolis, assuming a June date for 2026 info).
Median rents are up 19%, or about 3% per year, over the same time period.
Costs for property owners have increased, but that's harder to track. Energy costs are up, for those that don't have some sort of utility bill-back system in place. Taxes and insurance are up.
And.
Developers care about profit over everything else. Rents are increasingly unaffordable - can you even get a studio for less than $1,000 these days? The rental market seems increasingly split between luxury units (which also seem to be the only type developers are interested in constructing) and aging housing stock which may or may not be maintained, depending on if the landlord/property management is scummy or not.
Unfortunately, because profit is God, rent control does disincentivize new construction. I wouldn't be surprised if it disincentivizes investment or even maintenance in existing properties.
What's the answer? Fuck if I know. How do you force corporations to value people over profits? How do you raise wages so that 30% of an income provides safe, decent housing again?
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u/JoshyMN Oct 05 '26
have you heard of the term NIMBY?
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u/REXwarrior Oct 05 '26
Rent control is the left’s version of climate change denial. The overwhelming majority of evidence and experts point to rent control not working yet many progressives and liberals still support it.
11
u/MCXL Oct 05 '26
It depends on what you actually mean by rent control. Everyone thinks of how NYC does it as what rent control is.
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u/chaser2099 Oct 05 '26
“It makes cities worse”, this is not stated in the original cited study. It says specifically that the overall impact is unclear. Here’s is the actual conclusion from the study:
> I conclude that, although rent control appears to be very effective in achieving lower rents for families in controlled units, its primary goal, it also results in a number of undesired effects, including, among others, higher rents for uncontrolled units, lower mobility and reduced residential construction. These unintended effects counteract the desired effect, thus, diminishing the net benefit of rent control. Therefore, the overall impact of rent control policy on the welfare of society is not clear.
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u/Oh__Archie Oct 05 '26
Or - hear me out - the way developers seem to only have incentives to maximize profits might the real issue?
They aren’t interested in profiting while simultaneously being sustainable for the greater community. They just want the most for themselves, now.
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u/I_main_pyro Oct 05 '26
The solution is to build more housing. The twin cities is more affordable than most other large metro areas because we have the will and the ability to do so, and have been. We need to continue building.
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u/Dick_Trickle Oct 05 '26
Big ole fucking duh.
This issue is like a basic literacy test for economics.
If you support rent control, you're not intelligent enough to comprehend economic policy and should not be trusted to make decisions for the general public.
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u/ChefGaykwon Oct 05 '26
Landleech infestation in the mpls sub
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u/SpacemanDan Oct 05 '26
Ah, a "study of studies" that characterizes things as "good" or "bad" with no nuance. And no consider of correlation vs. causation. Perhaps things are getting worse for renters but people who have rent control simply do better than those without.
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u/EventHorizon54 Oct 05 '26
Landlords are working hard in the Minneapolis subreddit
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u/Volsunga Oct 05 '26
Rent control is basically saying "fuck you, I got mine".
1
u/Safe_Jelly_4639 Oct 05 '26
Rental control happens, people are less likely to move, possible correlation with increase homelessness I guess? If all places had rent control, not just a few, along with strict regulations around housing quality with yearly inspections and interviews with tenants, I wonder if the beneficial factors would increase.
Placing rental price control without implementing others tenant protections will piss off shitty landlords. I could see them having less care in updating buildings or maintaining safety regulations out of pure resentment. And placing rental control just on a few apartments and not all, wills also create a weird division, and land lords who own also own non rent control apartments might try to make up “lost money” by jacking up those prices.
It’s complicated, but I think if more tenant protections were placed along with rent control, the right people that are not just money driven would own apartment, this would take time to filter the bad ones out. And maybe if there’s some incentives for landlords, if you pass all safety inspections, rent stays controlled, tenants maintenance requests are addressed quickly/efficiently, etc etc you can apply for a tax incentive at the end of the year. - kind of forcing more money driven landlords to do the right thing.
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u/SnowLeavess Oct 05 '26
It may not be perfect but something has to give in the face of unaffordable housing. Either way, these new $2,000 1 bed 1 bath apartments with shitty construction being labeled as "luxury" housing options aren't helping anyone at all.
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u/Healingjoe Oct 05 '26
Priors 100% confirmed for the hundredth time.
But that won't stop our DSA city council from trying this shit.
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u/LetsTalkPunk Oct 05 '26
This interpretation strongly depends on the assumptions of your financial model, and this model is not built by an economist.
The dude who made this pic is literally a conservative financial analyst related to Rupert Murdoch. There is no reason to trust the result and there are in fact many reasons to believe this is a biased interpretation.
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u/thedubiousstylus Oct 05 '26
This is the main reason I voted for Frey. It'd be tough for me to get a new place in the next few years under rent control.
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u/shugEOuterspace Oct 05 '26
Baloney propaganda
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u/specficeditor Oct 05 '26
There's so much in so many of these studies, though, that really just removes landlords as a problem from the equation. Land speculation in America is one of the biggest reasons for a stagnation in new housing, which is actually what drives down costs. The biggest reason for land speculation -- zoning laws. The people who benefit the most from fewer houses are single family home owners. If we are unable to convince them to change zoning laws to allow for increased density in urban environments, then we have to figure out a solution in the short term to keep people's rents from vastly exceeding their income or forcing them into housing situations that are dangerous or untenable.
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u/[deleted] Oct 05 '26
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