Word: sternlieb
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...being sacrificed to the long-range effects of reduced maintenance. Rent control's proponents claim that it has had no detrimental effect on the quality of the housing stock and that the original housing shortage continues. Predictably, the Harbridge House report sticks to the latter line while the Sternlieb report follows the former. Only a sharply analytical look at the information provided in both reports allows the reality of the issue to shine through...
...such a shortage exists, some kind of rent control is necessary to keep rents within reasonable limits. After conclusively proving that there is no reliable measure for vacancy rates which would determine the extent of a housing shortage, Harbridge House still speculates that there is such a shortage. The Sternlieb report entirely ignores the issue. There are indicators on both sides-public housing projects (except in Roxbury and Dorchester) are over-subscribed, but there is an increasing number of abandoned buildings in supposedly overcrowded Cambridge...
Then there's the issue of rent control and its effect on housing quality. The Sternlieb report makes a strong argument that landlords, confronted with stable rents and rising costs, are cutting back on their only variable-maintenance costs. Mortgage payments and taxes are by far the greatest costs for landlords, and are almost entirely beyond their control. The margin left for maintenance is never a large one, but with inflation (especially in heating fuel) and rent control, it may be non-existent. With a housing stock such as Cambridge's, consisting largely of older buildings, maintenance costs are substantial...
...normally unwilling to lend to prospective builders in rent controlled communities. In Cambridge, there is no incentive under rent control to make capital improvements such as kitchen modernization or any major renovation. Burned buildings are left to rot; renovation simply isn't worthwhile under rent control. Even if George Sternlieb's picture of housing deterioration is somewhat exaggerated. It is difficult to escape the conclusion that rent control's discouragement of both new construction and renovation must lead to a progressive outmoding of the housing stock...
...each case individually, rent control is run by an unpredictable, bureaucracy floundering in vast amounts of red tape. In the Harbridge House's (taken from projections made by the Rent Board), the average delay between application and final decision on a rent increase in Cambridge is six weeks. The Sternlieb report cites a figure of five and a half months. In either case, by the time an increase has been granted, inflation may already have rendered it obsolete...