At the present moment, there is no form of nationwide or statewide rent control in the United States. In basic terms, 'rent control' refers to any government policy on the regulation of rental housing costs and control on tenant eviction. Typically, these systems are practiced in progressive areas and highly populated cities where securing an affordable apartment or home can be increasingly difficult, especially for the members of the lower class and other disadvantaged groups. Being that California hosts the most densely populated cities of the United States, a few local governments have appropriately responded to the housing problem by enacting rent control to support renters in their communities. However, the State of California is still in desperate need of a statewide rent control system. The current housing system of free market had authorized landlords to abuse tenants. To clarify, this practice, called 'gouging', is best described by …show more content…
In the absence of rent control policies, landlords need very little to no reason to evict tenants via gouging (Hanly 196). It is not an uncommon practice for unrestricted landowners to clear their units by raising the rent to the point where their tenants can no longer afford to occupy them. If rental regulation was applied, the tenant would hold the right to occupy the unit as long as the rent is paid according to the rental contract and there are no specific occurrences such as the violation of a public or safety code (Hanly 196). As a result, landlords could not rid of specific abiding tenants as they would be unable to substantially increase the rent between identical units or simply evict them directly without proper reason. Merely removing landlords from a gouging position would significantly increase the security of tenure for occupants. To validate this, there are living examples of these laws in practice on both small and large