[jyl]

I can see having rent control laws that conform with what a good, normal landlord does and prohibits what bad, rapacious landlords do.

In Portland, when I moved here, there was no rent control at all and bad landlords would tell tenants “next month your rent goes up 50%”. So the voters in the city elected a city commissioner who pushed through a law that requires landlord to pay a moving charge (typically $1-3K depending on unit size) for a no-cause eviction or a rent increase greater than 10%, and then the state passed a law that prohibited rent increases greater than 10%/year. Landlords I know were not really affected by this, since few needed to raise rents more than 10% in a single year, and the laws allowed them to raise 10% every year. Then that same commissioner got a law passed that dictated a ridiculous system for screening tenants and choosing along applicants. That really affects the landlords I know, because they basically can’t choose good tenants anymore. Now we have an eviction moratorium, and while I understand the reason for it, it really needs to exempt the smaller landlords who are going to go bust.