Safe is a very broad term. Its not being used hyperbolically here. It’s not referring to physical safety.

Brother have you just willfully ignored what US CEOs say every day about US workers?

fwiw, the roads are constantly littered with accidents and the US has the highest pedestrian fatality rate out of all “western” nations

It generally doesn’t though. People who rent aren’t suddenly going to be able to afford to buy. If you look at cities that do these policies, homeownership rates do go up, but the entire lower income community is basically evicted from the city. It’s basically accelerated gentrification.

These types of policies also affect the types of units that get built. If rental units are a risky business move, then more construction will go towards larger single family homes, which are 1) less space efficient (fewer units), but 2) much more expensive (so the builder gets their money’s worth)

The other thing is with rent control, housing stock will decrease because people will not move. If you are in a rent controlled unit, you’re very strongly incentivised to never leave : because while your rent has been grandfathered to a low price, when you move you’ll suddenly starting paying the inflated rates everyone else has been paying to offset the sub-market rents you had. Live in the same place long enough and this could be a 1000% increase.

There’s an average renter turnover. If the market would usually see a 5% increase yoy, and average stay us 5 years, this 3% policy means you’d have tenents “underpaying” by about 13%. So, to compensate, instead of new leases being 27% more expensive, they’ll be 40% more expensive after 5 years.

The root cause of all the raising home prices and rents is always the same: nimbys and lack of housing supply. Rent control works for people who are already in a home, but makes the problem worse for everyone else (who move, or become adults, etc)

The problem is raising rents are always due to lack of supply. I used to be very supportive of rent control but realized it’s just a shitty band-aid on the real problem - lack of housing.

It will keep rents low for a bit, but won’t fix the fundamental problem that allows high rents in the first place: and people will still struggle to find housing.

And you can bet your ass that any new will have massively increased rent or prices to compensate.

The real fix, like everywhere else, is to kick out the nimbys and allow building again