Study: St. Paul's Rent Control Law Primarily Provides Benefits for High-Income Renters

Study: St. Paul's Rent Control Law Primarily Provides Benefits for High-Income Renters link

• A new paper finds that lower income property owners are seeing the biggest falls in property values while high-income renters will get the biggest discounts on rent.
  

"...In November 2021, St. Paul, Minnesota voters passed an ordinance that limits annual rent increases citywide to 3 percent and includes none of the typical allowances or exemptions for inflation, vacancies, and new construction.
While the law doesn't kick in until May, rent control's surprise passage in the city saw developers pull permit applications, financiers walk away from projects, and city officials rush to amend the terms of the law. 
...But a new paper published in March on SSRN by University of Southern California Marshall School of Business professors Kenneth Ahern and Marco Giacoletti contends that 

• the poorest tenants will see relatively few benefits from the new law. 
• Instead, the two argue that the pattern of falling property values in St. Paul after the passage of rent control shows that better-off renters will reap the biggest gains from the law..."