> Here's another interesting fact from Argentina's rent controls, per the Journal: "In Buenos Aires—a city dubbed the Paris of the South for its broad avenues and cafe culture—many apartments long sat empty, with landlords preferring to keep them vacant, or lease them as vacation rentals, rather than comply with the government's rent law." The newspaper said that owners of many of those 200,000 units are now putting them on the market.

> I've reported on a similar situation in San Francisco, which has more than 52,000 vacant units. Many owners would rather keep them empty than rent them out under the city's rent-control terms

So it's just a bunch of oligarchs owning far more land and buildings than they should withholding supply artificially. Then they can artifically ease off of it to make things look better for their preferred candidate even though rent prices aren't that much better. Even the article admits rent prices are still going up year over year, it's only when adjusted for inflation that it looks slightly better (which, also ironic given that his policies seem to have sharply raised inflation). So your average person still gets fucked.

I don't know what "artificial" is supposed to mean here. Landlords respond to incentives; if letting out a unit means they'll be stuck with a rent controlled tenant (or in the US, stuck with a tenant-favorable legal environment that will leave them on the hook for damages and missed rent) then the smart thing to do is STR or use the apartment as your own guest home etc.

The smart thing for the government to do would be to make sitting on rental property illegal.

Without rent control, my friends and I could not afford to live in SF. It’s one of the only things keeping the city from being completely captured by the wealthy.