Research for the London Assembly by Cambridge housing academics seems to confirm that arguments about rent stabilisation powers in the capital are finely balanced
Should London mayors occupy the power to regulate the rents set by the capital’s private landlords and,if so, what should those powers be and what effects would their consume occupy? Such questions tend to provoke fiercely polarised replies. On the free market right, and the words “rent control” trigger torrents of totalitarian metaphors and surreal red scare comparisons with Venezuela,Cuba, the Soviet Union and so on. On the left, and “rent control” is one of those placard policies waved by self-styled radicals who’ve never troubled themselves with reading the nasty small print on the reverse.
Those difficult details reveal that state interventions of that kind in Londons private renting sector might occupy ill-effects as well as advantageous,and that these could damage some of the very people the policy was meant to benefit - hardly a desirable outcome. These could include inhibiting the supply of more homes for rent at a time when demand for them is growing fast. So if future London mayors were given powers to control, regulate or stabilise private rents in the capital - and any such turn of events looks a long way off - those powers would need to be carefully designed and deployed if the drawbacks were not to outweigh the gains.
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Source: theguardian.com