Rent Control- Though it sounds like a good thing it's not really. Why?

 Though Rent Control helps long term residents at apartments and houses stay in those houses it also does other things.

One of the things it does it to make the landlords not keep up those apartments like fix plumbing or electrical things because there is no money to do that without raising the rents. 

So, though it helps people with a fixed income stay living in a house or apartment it also reduces the quality of life of everyone experiencing rent control because the landlords can no longer afford to keep those places up unless they can get the rent they need to do this. 

So, the law of diminishing returns sets in and causes those apartments and houses to not be maintained properly just so landlords can stay in business at all. This is happening all across the country and if rent controls get bad enough then landlords have to either sell their units or go bankrupt at some point which likely might not be good for tenants either.

I think the best part of Rent Control is that possibly people renting won't have to go homeless. This likely would be the best reason for rent control to reduce homelessness.

However, as units get more and more dilapidated by rent control inevitably this could cause problems for people living there too as landlords no longer can afford to fix problems in those units. So, a nice property in this way becomes the property of a slum lord in this way too. It's all economics in the short and long run.

So, yes, you can maybe keep people from going homeless but that is likely the best thing about rent control that I can see right now. Everything else is counterproductive for a good and safe life for the tenants because landlords will stop fixing things which will make living there less safe for everyone and could cause things like electrical or gas fires over time if the unit is not an all electrical unit.