When it comes to the economy, basic economics remains undefeated. 

In a now-viral video, Wall Street Journal Free Expression writer Emma Camp offers a simple but clear explanation of why rent control does not solve a housing shortage, but makes it worse. That lesson matters as rent-control proposals, like Zohran Mamdani’s affordability agenda in New York City , are increasingly treated as serious answers to the affordability crisis, particularly within the Democratic Socialists of America. 

Price controls are back in fashion. Supply and demand, apparently, are not. The solution is not complicated. When housing is scarce, let people build more housing.

"Can rent control fix the housing crisis?" Camp asked. "No! It's time for some Econ 101."

"Rent control sounds like a simple enough idea. Housing is too expensive, so why don't we stop landlords from charging so much money? Yay! Wrong. The main reason why rents rise is that there aren't enough housing units for the number of people who want to live in a given city," she said. "With many people competing for the same apartments, landlords rationally set rents at the highest amount they think someone is going to."

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Rent control sets a ceiling on how much landlords can charge, but it doesn't solve the underlying housing shortage. It actually makes things worse, because developers don't want to build new units if they think they can be legally prohibited from charging enough to earn back their investment. Almost half of the rental apartments in New York are rent regulated. About 50,000 of them stand empty, many of them because their landlords can't charge enough to make up for the cost of necessary repairs. 

"So how do you lower rents? Build more housing," Camp said. "Cities like Austin, Denver, and Phoenix have recently seen a huge increase in building and a decrease in rents. Lots of people want to move to these cities, but the housing supply can keep up, so landlords have to compete with each other to attract new tenants, which they do by lowering prices."

The solution is simple, yet politicians and voters often seem to have more appetite for a remedy known to fail than one that would actually address the problem. The real challenge is whether voters are willing to support the policies that work, and how housing affordability can be improved in the short term while new homes are being built. That is what makes rent control so politically seductive. It offers the appearance of an immediate solution: lower the legal price and declare victory.

And the appeal is bipartisan. A recent CBS News/YouGov poll found that although Republicans remain far more likely than Democrats to identify with free markets over socialism, a majority of Republicans still approve of government price controls. When people are struggling, ideological labels matter less than promises of relief. They may reject the word “socialism,” but a price control marketed as affordability can suddenly sound like common sense.