There are thousands of empty units around without rent control. People cannot afford rent in them.

"Secondary effects" - please educate us on what they are, and their magnitude.

There are 48.5 million rental units in the US. A few thousand empty ones is miniscule.

I guess to put a finer point on it: this isn't exclusively a market problem, and it's incorrect to reduce/redirect all forms of market manipulation down to 'rent control'.

Certainly rent control distorts the market unnaturally, but it does so in favor of tenants and human rights, and proportionally speaking, I don't think it's the biggest distortion by a long shot. The much larger distortion causing the market problems is the optimization of rent prices at the expense of human rights.

If the market is to be distorted, I personally would pick the one that prioritizes continuity of housing over the one that maximizes rent income over total units rented.