Should rent control exist?

Your question is self-contradictory. You ask if rent control should exist, but then you say it should just be limited to a certain period of time. Those aren’t the same thing. You also seem to overvalue the ability to afford things that are nearby. Depending on various factors, an apartment complex can be located in either an area that has been zoned residential or an area that has been zoned commercial. You seem to be asking about apartments that are located in commercial areas. But the cost of products for sale in a commercial area can vary wildly. I live across the street from a mall. It has a Sears and a Swarovski. Which one should determine whether I can live here? And why do I have to shop in the same place I live? My parents make a ton of money. They also spend frugally, which means staying away from all of the expensive shops near to their home.

I am of the belief there should be some rent control to protect existing tenants from egregious rent increases. But I am not in favor of controls beyond that.

Once a landlord and tenant have comet agreement on an initial lease, lease renewal should be at no more than a small increase, such as 5%.

I’m referring to nice areas. There are people in my neighborhood who pay less than $1000 a month and some as much as 12k. Since rents are hire, so is the cost of everything else.

Rent is quite nuts where I live. It’s roughly about $2 a sq/ft per month. A crappy one bedroom 400–500 sq/ft apartment in a shitty part of town is going to be $1000/month. Want a nice apartment? $1400–1600 or more a month. It’s not affordable I.M.O. Home prices are still reasonable but the inventory is very low so as soon as a decent house goes on the market they get snatched up. (a median home here is still~160k) Our condo sold in a matter of hours with multiple offers. The house we bought we had to offer more than list to get it because of multiple offers. We had to put in the offer on the first day it was on the market. I’m not sure what form of rent control needs to be implemented if at all but the slumlords sure do have renters in a pickle. When I rented I just did not own anything. When they wanted to jack up rent I took my two carloads of stuff and went to where the best rates were. Probably took four hours to move. I ended up having a new apartment every year as they usually wanted to jack rent up 20–30% Greedy bastards.

Why should the whim of the merchants in the area matter? You’re not obligated to patronize their business.

As a rental property owner I wouldn’t invest in a rent control area. There is no incentive to make improvements to the property and I can see how it would create slumlords if it ends up costing more to maintain a property than you can charge for rent.
I think subsidized rent for low income people is a much better plan

Thank goodness for rent control. My aunt would be on the street without it. The same way many states have ceilings and discounts for property owners under homestead laws or specifically for older citizens, I think at minimum we should protect senior citizens from ridiculously high rent spikes. I guess there are a variety of ways to do it, I’m open to various ideas. It can’t hurt the landlord so badly they they are losing money obviously, or that other tenants are paying ridiculously high rents to try to counterbalance low rents.

Rents, depending on the city, may be influenced heavily by market forces more than actual costs, which can mean the owners are making huge money. It just depends.

No, I’d say yes to rent control, and I don’t get where you’re coming from. Some cities are unaffordable (or becoming unaffordable at current rates) for most people, even working families of two with no children. It’s ridiculous, and the “free market” without rent control will tend to raise the price to the highest they can get from people. Since people need to have someplace to live, and since owning rental property involves so much capital investment that it doesn’t make financial sense for renters to be competing with more volume at less cost, and since the wages range from unemployed-at-the-moment-or-minimum-wage, to people making many times what other people make, free market rents in a place with enough wealthy tenants makes for unaffordable housing. Same for real estate, only worse and it goes to the banks and investors. It’s become outrageous in many places.

I think in very few cases would you be doing anyone any “favor” by kicking them out of their rent-controlled place.