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Article: Disaster didn't strike. (issue on rent control)
- Article from:
- Reason
- Article date:
- October 1, 1997
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1997 Reason Foundation. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Last summer, in-fighting among Republicans prevented New York City's World War II-vintage rent controls from being abolished. By contrast, Massachusetts did away with rent control in a statewide referendum in 1994. And despite tenant activists' dire predictions of wholesale evictions of poor families, the disabled, and the elderly, disaster has yet to strike the state.
One reason, suggests a recent Manhattan Institute study by Henry Pollakowski of MIT's Center for Real Estate, is that few beneficiaries of rent control were poor. Pollakowski found that about half the population who paid below-market rents in Cambridge were white-collar professionals in their prime ...