Supply Over Restriction: Why Housing Policy Needs to Move Away from Rent Control
Published:
ECON 197, UC Santa Cruz · May 2026
Argues that the U.S. housing affordability crisis is a supply problem and that rent control treats the symptom rather than the cause. Using St. Paul and Minneapolis as a natural experiment, it shows how St. Paul’s 2021 rent control ordinance coincided with a collapse in new construction while Minneapolis kept building.