Metropolitics

Unexpected Outcomes: Land Ceilings, Rent Control, and the Rise of Real Estate in Bombay

Nikhil Rao — 2025-12-09T06:00:00Z

Paradoxically, Mumbai's neoliberal real-estate system has its origins in progressive legislation.
---- Series: Provincializing the “Real-Estate Turn” When the Phoenix Mills compound in central Mumbai reopened in 1999 after a long closure, the former textile factory complex featured a bowling alley and a nightclub. It bore the distinction of being the first mill compound in Mumbai's storied textile mill district—Girangaon, or the village of mills—to transform itself from a manufacturing space

- Essays / Bombay, Mumbai, rent control, land ceilings, real estate, real-estate turn, legislation, governance

The Financialization of Rent-Regulated Housing in New York City after Rent Reform

Benjamin F. Teresa — 2020-12-04T06:00:00Z

In New York City, rent-controlled housing stock has been progressively deregulated over the last three decades, to the point where it is now wholly in the hands of financial investors. In this paper, Benjamin Teresa analyzes how tenants' associations have been fighting back against these landlords, who have let housing fall into disrepair while simultaneously hiking rents.
---- Series: Cities in the Age of Financialization In June of 2019, the New York State legislature stunned the

- From the Field / housing, right to housing, financialization, rent control, rent, tenants, New York, United States, activism, urban knowledge, public policy, housing policy

The Limits of the Accepted Orthodoxy on Rent Control

Loïc Bonneval & François Robert & translated by Oliver Waine — 2019-03-22T06:00:00Z

In response to a recent critique of their work, Loïc Bonneval and François Robert defend their method and results. In their view, not only should the idea of the unwanted effects of rent control be qualified, but the negative effects of the lack of regulation of the private rental market, which characterizes the current situation, should also be highlighted.
Robert C. Ellickson and David Le Bris's criticism of an article on rent control published in Métropolitiques in 2011 (and translated in

- Debates / rent, rent control, rental, rental housing, affordable housing, housing, housing crisis, housing policy, real estate, real-estate industry, history, France, Lyon

The Damage Inflicted by French Rent Controls between 1914 and 1948

Robert C. Ellickson & David Le Bris — 2019-02-26T06:00:00Z

In an essay in Metropolitics, Loïc Bonneval questioned the consensus among economists that strict rent controls have perverse effects. Bonneval based his analysis on a study of apartment buildings in Lyon between the two world wars. Robert Ellickson and David Le Bris challenge Bonneval's interpretation, and marshal evidence of the damage that rent controls inflicted in Lyon and France between 1914 and 1948.
In an article originally published in 2011 in Métropolitiques (in French) and recently

- Debates / rent, rent control, rental, rental housing, housing markets, housing policy, inequalities, Lyon, France, housing, housing crisis

Does Rent Control Prevent Investment in Real Estate?

Loïc Bonneval & translated by Oliver Waine — 2019-02-08T06:00:00Z

While rent-control measures kept private rental housing in France affordable for much of the 20th century, it has been massively rejected since the 1950s, on the grounds that it discourages investment in real estate. Here, Loïc Bonneval utilizes an unpublished historical survey to demonstrate the highly debatable nature of these criticisms—as rent control did not stop rental investment being profitable in the past.
The question of how to keep private-sector rents in check has become ever more

- Debates / France, housing, real estate, property, Lyon, rent control, rental, housing crisis, housing markets, rent, 20th century, 19th century, rental housing

Neighborhood Change and the Right to the City

Adam Tanaka — 2016-03-29T05:00:00Z

New York City's Stuyvesant Town is the largest housing development in Manhattan, and also one of the most controversial and most studied. Adam Tanaka reviews the latest contribution to studies of Stuyvesant Town, by Rachael A. Woldoff, Lisa M. Morrison and Michael R. Glass. Gentrification and rent deregulation have changed the composition of the development, and longtime renters now coexist with younger and wealthier households. Woldoff et al. explore this coexistence using ethnographic methods,

- Reviews / gentrification, housing, New York, rent control, ethnography, right to the city

Precarity and Gentrification: A Feedback Loop

Samuel Stein — 2015-04-14T20:50:00Z

How do rent hikes and labor precarity conspire to reinforce each other against tenants and workers? Samuel Stein explains the mechanisms that link these two trends affecting citizens and calls for a tightening of rent-control laws to stop the spiraling descent of American residents into poverty.
Two of the most commonly discussed features of neoliberal capitalism are precarious labor and gentrified cities. As jobs become increasingly insecure, housing becomes impossibly expensive. Generally,

- Debates / gentrification, housing, rent control, rental, precarity, rent, rental housing

The Age of the Renter

Tony Roshan Samara — 2015-01-05T05:50:00Z

Not all Americans own their home. In fact, more and more of them rent it. More and more of them also end up paying a disproportionate amount of their income for shelter. Despite a system largely biased in favor of homeowners and widespread predatory practice against tenants, Tony Roshan Samara sees recent renters' mobilizations as an encouraging sign for many poor families throughout the USA.
The recession of 2004–2009 ushered in an era of sustained, structural inequality that is

- Debates / homeownership, housing, United States, rent control, rental, housing crisis, right to the city, rent, rental housing

Rent control: a miracle solution to the housing crisis?

Jean Bosvieux & translated by Oliver Waine — 2012-11-21T07:18:29Z

The sharp rise in housing costs in France since the end of the 1990s has generated much debate on the subject of rent control policy, abandoned in 1948 and reintroduced in 2012 by the newly elected left-wing government. While some defend the need to protect tenants, Jean Bosvieux highlights the counterproductive effects of such measures, instead defending a policy of building affordable rental housing.
Rent control was one of the key issues debated during the 2012 French presidential

- Debates / housing, Paris, real estate, rent control