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The Washington Post has taken a tough stance on rent control policyarguing that “price caps are a textbook policy error” that leaves renters “worse off” than they would otherwise be.
IN Tuesday editorialThe Post cited rent control failures in cities like St. Paul and New York as evidence that the Los Angeles City Council's 12-2 vote to lower the existing cap on annual rent increases will do more harm than good.
“Whenever people worry about affordability, populists offer a deceptively simple solution: rent control. However, price caps are a textbook policy failure that leaves renters in every community trying to live worse off than they would otherwise be: less housing supply, more deferred maintenance, and reduced mobility. Fresh examples are not needed, but cities and states continue to repeat the experiment,” the editors write.
Supporter Zohran Mamdani holds a “Freeze Rent” sign at a campaign event at Hells Kitchen in New York City on Tuesday, October 28, 2025. (Fox News Digital/Deirdre Heavey)
Comparing differences in outcomes between rent-controlled and unregulated cities, the Post highlighted “the story of Twin Cities in Minnesota”—comparing St. Paul to neighboring Minneapolis to show how their starkly different housing policies tell a compelling story.
“In 2022, St. Paul enacted one of the strictest controls in the country, capping rent increases at 3 percent for most apartments. Its neighbor Minneapolis, just across the Mississippi River, has abandoned price controls and instead focused on creating a housing supply to meet demand,” the document details.
“In St. Paul, home building permits dropped 79 percent in the first year. In Minneapolis, they nearly quadrupled. Rents have risen more than twice as much in St. Paul as in Minneapolis, in part because some landlords have gone over the cap to offset future losses, according to an article published this week in the Journal Wall Street Journal,“, the Post's editors read.
While St. Paul is “trying to clean up the mess it has created” with its housing policies, rent control critics won mayoral elections in both cities last month, according to the Post.
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The city government of St. Paul did not immediately return Fox News Digitalrequest for comments.
The editorial quoted Swedish economist Assar Lindbeck, who once quipped that rent control was “the most effective method of city destruction currently known, short of bombing.”
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“It becomes irrational for landlords to invest in maintenance. Others are taking properties off the market for sale. Landlords who continue to rent are more likely to increase rent when a lease is first signed to account for their limited ability to raise prices in the future. This will make the initial rental costs higher than necessary. Meanwhile, tenants are less likely to increase or decrease space as needed, unwilling to sign a more expensive lease up front,” explains the Post.
“Despite all this, Los Angeles Last month, the City Council voted 12-2 to reduce the existing cap on annual rent increases.”
The Post concluded that there was no “feigned ignorance” about the “consequences that inevitably follow these restrictions,” citing as evidence the roughly 50,000 empty apartments in New York City — “thanks to rent control policies.”
The New York City government and Los Angeles City Council did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital's request for comment.
“In Scotland, the Scottish National Party capped rent increases at 3 per cent in 2022 – only to report their highest ever rent increases this autumn. Meanwhile in Argentina, President Javier Miley abolished rent controls in December 2023. The real estate market has flooded and rents have dropped by an average of 40 percent. American cities would be wise to replicate this,” the editors write.
