Rent control might seem to be a good solution the affordable housing crisis, but it’s not so simple | Opinion – The Tennessean

opinion

Johanna Roth Nashville Tennessean

Published 11:00 PM EDT Sep 8, 2019

Housing is the biggest social issue of our time. We need political solutions for affordable housing that keep people accommodated and cities thriving.

But how do we do that? Bad news first: There is no simple answer to this.

The municipal government of Berlin, Germany, made international news last week when a leaked paper suggested they would be considering establishing rent control. Berlin would be the first city in Germany to do so.

The reasons are alarming: The German capital and its 3.6 million residents are experiencing its biggest housing crisis since the 1920s, when people rented beds to sleep in shifts because they couldn’t afford a room (plus, with almost 4 million residents but far fewer buildings than today, the town was hopelessly overcrowded).

Nowadays, there are 310,000 units of affordable housing needed in the Berlin city area, a 2018 study by the Hans Böckler Foundation found. At the same time, rents have doubled since 2008. Not only are there not enough apartments for everyone, but the existing ones are getting less and less affordable. Old people, families with small incomes, small shops and companies are being forced out of their neighborhoods and replaced by young professionals and the commerce chains they love.

Sound familiar?

Nashville needs a tenth of the affordable housing units that Berlin needs — 31,000, according to a 2017 mayor’s office report.

However, with 691,000 residents, Music City does not have one-tenth, but one-fifth, fewer residents than the 3.6-million resident German capital, meaning the housing crisis is even worse in Nashville. In all of the state of Tennessee, 133,581 affordable housing units are needed.

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Rent control does not guarantee equality for renters

The so-called “Mietendeckel” (“rent cap”) plan of the Berlin government proposes to freeze rents for the next five years. Plus, there will be a maximum rent for households that pay more than 30% of their income for housing.

That sounds like a very good idea for any boomtown in the world, including Nashville, although rent control has been prohibited by the state of Tennessee since the 1990s.

And yet it is doubtful that this would only benefit renters.

First, just because everyone will not pay more than a certain amount of money for housing doesn’t mean that there will be higher equality among renters. Landlords will still give apartments to those people they consider the most reliable — e.g., those with the highest income. A single mom working three badly paying jobs will be just as desperately looking for a place for herself and the kids.

Plus, it’s not that easy to just cap rents. Within hours after the paper was leaked, stocks of the biggest housing companies began to fall, which raised serious concerns about property investors pulling out of Berlin because rent control would make constructing less attractive for them there.

On the other hand: What good do investors do to a city if they don’t build affordable houses, but only prestigious lofts and offices?

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Other cities could learn from Nashville’s conversation about housing

Living should not be a luxury item. To have a roof over one’s head is a basic human right, just like eating, drinking and sleeping. Everyone in local politics must acknowledge that and act accordingly.

Nashville Mayor David Briley has called housing a “human right” and added that the city “has an obligation to provide housing to everyone that lives in this community,” while his opponent in the mayoral runoff, At-large Metro Councilman John Cooper, wants to “make affordable housing central to everything we do” and said housing “isn’t simply about putting roofs over people’s heads; it’s about creating community.”

Both have proposed detailed plans for affordable housing, which is encouraging. Because to solve the housing crisis in big cities like Nashville and Berlin, there needs to be a more complex solution than just cutting rents.

Governments should enforce laws that prevent rents from rising, but to regulate the inequalities of the market, they must make sure first that there are enough houses for everyone to share.

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Property companies need a strong hand of the state to show them the way. And the ones who already engage in building affordable houses need all the public support they can get.

The Tennessee General Assembly has nullified affordable housing laws in Nashville. Instead, we will see 94-year-old former President of the United States Jimmy Carter help build houses with the organization Habitat for Humanity in Nashville in October. It is about time for the state and the city to forge ahead with better, common-sense solutions. 

This absolutely needs to be the most important issue for the next mayor, who will be elected on Sept. 12. Hopefully, whoever wins will do better than his colleagues in Berlin. Because a good idea does not necessarily make good law.

Johanna Roth is a journalist from Berlin, Germany. She is currently working in The Tennessean newsroom in Nashville on an Arthur F. Burns Fellowship provided by the International Center for Journalists in Washington, D.C.

Published 11:00 PM EDT Sep 8, 2019

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