It’s a funny thing, being right for the wrong reasons or wrong for the right reasons. Not “ha-ha” funny, but still funny. And so you might smile if you follow the College Park City Council and Prince George’s Property Owners Association talking past each other, as the council prepares to vote on an extension of the current rent control policy. At the moment, the council seems to lean towards extending rent control, and it’s right in doing so. But doing so for the wrong reasons might make for muddled decision-making in the future.
In the “wrong for the right reasons” category we have the property owners association, a group of College Park landlords. The group sponsored a lawsuit in 2006 seeking to overturn the city’s rent control policy and receive $100 million in damages. Bashing rent control as discrimination against students, association member David Dorsch described the city’s justifications for rent control as “whizzed up on the fly.” He alleged that the council’s true intent was simply to force students out of the city. There is a kernel of truth in his allegation, but the stated aims of the plaintiffs are flimsy to the point of the absurd. Student demand for local housing far outstrips supply. Removing rent control would encourage current owners of houses to rent their property out, but rental prices would skyrocket. Helping students find housing? That’s a cause we can get behind. It’s just that bringing a few additional houses into the rental market while encouraging a substantial spike in rental prices doesn’t fit the bill.
At the same time, we hope in future considerations of rent stabilization, the council isn’t led astray by a vision of primarily owner-occupied single family houses in the neighborhoods nearest the university. There is some reason to suspect an impulse to push students either back toward campus or into high-rise apartments. Section §127-1 of the city code, which covers rent stabilization, lists “reducing the number of single-family homes that are rental properties” as one of its goals. The city also commissioned a report by the Sage Policy Group on the issue of rent stabilization, which helpfully observes, “Indeed, it can be argued that by providing a disincentive to convert owner-occupied housing into rental housing, the City has preserved a greater share of rental demand for newer, professionally-managed apartments.”
What’s more, the vision of ensuring owners are living in the single-family homes near the university isn’t so compelling. The Sage Report hypes up the fact that owner-occupied residences have fewer first-notice code violations. The report isn’t terribly concerned with the fact that, according to 2007 data, renter-occupied properties generated only a whopping .03 more violations per unit. The report also excitedly notes that a survey found that, “Children of homeowners are more likely to finish high school, perform better on school achievement tests and have fewer behavioral problems.” Never mind the fact the houses at issue would most likely be rented by undergraduate students unlikely to be living with children of their own.
There’s no doubt that College Park is a painfully skewed housing market in serious need of real competition. Relevant doubts should be dispelled by the fact that apartment 610A at The View, currently available to new tenants for the bargain-basement price of $1,005.96 a month, is the only room still open on the floor. Rent stabilization is an important stop-gap measure to ensure at least some affordable housing in the downtown area. If, on Sept. 1, the council votes to extend rent stabilization, the policy will remain in effect until 2012. By that point, a number of housing projects in the works should help to normalize the housing market, and if that becomes the case, rent stabilization should be discontinued.
