Power lust prompting rent-control crusade
Regarding Glendale’s “Fair Housing Month” (April 11) -- and the
current crusade for rent control -- there is nothing fair about rent
controllers’ desire to use the force of law to hold rents below
market levels.
A “fair” rent can only mean one freely consented to by both
landlord and tenant, the only two parties to a rental transaction who
have any moral right to be involved in determining rents. Rent
control replaces the landlord’s consent with a government decree. In
theory, it gives tenants the unfair advantage of having access to
housing they could not afford at market rates. In practice, it
results in housing shortages and poorly maintained housing for all
renters.
And what could be more unfair -- or dishonest -- than the proposal
to use rent control as a form of prior restraint against landlords
who “might ultimately” have a discriminatory motive for the rents
they set? It is evident that this proposal by alleged foes of
discrimination trades on a blatant and discriminatory stigmatization
of landlords, or else we might, by the same logic, put all Glendale
residents under house arrest, since any resident “might ultimately”
go out and commit murder.
What more do we need to convince us that the political motive for
rent control is mere power lust?
DARRYL WRIGHT
Glendale