Lawmakers across the U.S. are looking to enact rent control, reviving measures largely shunned in recent years in an effort to curb the surge in home rental prices throughout the country, the Wall Street Journal reported. These proposals, which would generally allow landlords to boost monthly rents by no more than 2% to 10%, are on the legislative agenda in more than a dozen states. Rental prices are up about 18% on average over the past two years, according to real-estate broker Redfin Corp., hitting record levels across the U.S. Large cities like Boston, affluent suburbs like Montclair, N.J., lower-income mobile-home communities in Colorado and fast-growing metros in Florida are among the places now considering rent control. “Rents are exploding at a pace far faster than income,” said Stijn Van Nieuwerburgh, an economist and professor at Columbia Business School who researches rent control. “The problem is now as bad as it has ever been. And probably much worse.” Rising rents are a big contributor to the recent surge in inflation that is starting to weigh on the U.S. economy. Cost of shelter accounts for 40% of the core Consumer Price Index, CPI’s biggest component. Economists at the San Francisco Federal Reserve said in a February inflation forecast that rent increases “point to significant upside risks to the overall inflation outlook.”
