The rent is too damn high. But rent control is not the solution.

The idea is back in the spotlight in the Bay State, thanks to advocacy group Homes for All Massachusetts proposing a ballot question that would limit rent increases each year to the cost of living in Massachusetts as measured by the Consumer Price Index, with a cap at 5%.

On paper, rent control would help those struggling to afford a place to live. In reality, those who need a rent-controlled apartment and those who get one are often not on the same economic page.

Take, for example, Zohran Mamdani, the New York state assemblyman, candidate for NYC mayor and current darling of the progressive set. The 33-year-old makes $142,000 a year and has been living in a rent-stabilized $2,300-a-month, one-bedroom apartment in Astoria.

As the New York Post reported, his neighbors aren’t happy. “It’s unfortunate that he supports policies that are great for the fortunate few (who) get these apartments,” said Jerry DeFazio, 33, a mechanical engineer who lived in the same building as Mamdani. “It makes it harder for everyone to afford … since landlords raise the other rents, like mine, to pay for his.”

Rent control brings out the Mamdanis: people who can afford more, but snag a sweet deal.

A Wall Street Journal analysis from 2019 found that wealthy tenants are getting some of the best deals out of the state’s rent stabilization law.

Higher-income rent-stabilized tenants were paying 39% less rent on average than their peers in market-rate apartments. Lower-income rent-stabilized tenants were paying only 15% less than their peers in market-rate apartments.

Mamdani comes from a wealthy family, and his six figure salary is on top of the additional income his illustrator wife, Rama Duwaji, brings to the home he’s lived for at least four years.  And that’s the thing: once someone grabs one of these rent-controlled gems, they don’t let go. Why would they?

Such actions are certainly not limited to New York.

That’s one of the reasons Jim Rooney, head of the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce, disparaged the idea.

“It’s a terrible idea,” Rooney said of rent control on WCVB. “Owners don’t invest in the property … people stay in those units, they don’t turn over.”

We need more housing stock in Massachusetts, much more. Rent control won’t spur construction. As the D.C. Policy Center reported, although new construction is often exempt from rent control, the possibility of future rent regulations can discourage developers from building new rental units.

Research from cities with and without rent control in New Jersey and California shows that cities with rent control experienced slower housing stock growth compared to cities without such laws, although results vary when adjusted for city size and other factors.

“We are trying a lot of things that have a history of failing,” Rooney said. “The history of rent control, just read the data. It’s just so bad, and then you get inclusionary zoning policies.”

Several Massachusetts municipalities had rent control, but Massachusetts voters opted to repeal the policy in 1994. It didn’t work then, and it won’t work now.

Editorial cartoon by Al Goodwyn (Creators Syndicate)