From a political perspective, it takes little to no effort to support a rent freeze. It’s not surprising that in the era of slop policy it would find fertile ground. It has all the transactional benefit of promising a key constituency a personal financial benefit while virtually none of the heavy horse trading needed of a tax cut or a new spending initiative. Promising people they can pay less for more is a hallmark of political pandering and modern advertising. Let’s be clear about what this is. It is quite literally the government saying we are deciding that despite evidence to the contrary we believe these buildings, the people who pay free market rents, and those who own them, should pay more to cover the “human right” of someone else’s housing. Lawmakers will twist themselves in knots to explain how no one should care about that because it’s just “fair”… However, if you are anything like me, you’ll flag at the very least that politicians feel this way because they don’t actually comprehend how much housing truly costs to operate, and their perception of the need of their constituents conveniently is also much greater than reality. Even in polling we have conducted with over 1000 respondents, oversampling I was heartened to see that a vast majority of people actually would be happy to pay more if it meant better housing. That tells me renters like myself understand something that lawmakers lose in the political process.The understanding that you get what you pay for. You may not always get better housing from more rent… but you will always get worse housing with less money.