It’s easy to depict a sinister cabal of greedy owners eager to force the writer’s poor widower out into the cold the day she dies. Since I don’t know these particular landlords, I can’t say for sure that they’re not like that. But rent control is not always so one-sided. Consider the following nuances that complicate the rent-control story:

(1) The owners of a rent-controlled unit may not be rich. The property may be their biggest source of income, and denying them market-rate rent for decades could put them in a precarious financial situation. And, since other owners get to charge market-rate rent, that creates an uneven playing field among owners. Maybe the millionaire owner without a rent-controlled tenant gets to charge $4,000/month in rent, while the middle-class owner who is using the rental income to put her kid through college or to pay for her mother’s nursing home, can charge no more than $1,200/month for an identical apartment. That scenario seems manifestly unfair, but rent-control advocates don’t seem to care about it, and the laws don’t take it into account.

(2) The tenant in a rent-controlled unit could be extremely wealthy. Maybe he rented the apartment years ago during law school, back when rents were lower, and now he’s a partner at a law firm making $1,000,000/year. Why does he get to sit on his $1,200/month rent for decades while the middle-class owner I described above is powerless to charge a fair-market rent?

I’m not saying rent control serves no legitimate purpose. Clearly it often does. But the way it plays out is not always so black and white. A system that took into account the income of the tenant and/or the assets of the landlord would be a more fair and common-sense approach.