Q23 - In essence, all rent-control policies

[mchelle]

I got this question correct but I wanted to review the answer choices to help my understanding. I was between (A) and (B). I understand why (B) supports the landlords' reluctance -- if rent control makes it less likely for landlords to profit from investments in maintenance or new construction, there is less incentive for landlords to make these investments.

However, can someone explain why (A) is incorrect? I can see why it is incorrect, because the tenants' preference can be considered irrelevant to the conclusion...but couldn't tenants' preference also be considered relevant? If tenants supposedly prefer rent control + low-quality over no rent control + high-quality, couldn't this also be an explanation for why landlords are reluctant to increase the quality of existing accommodations under rent-control? Since tenants aren't demanding for better quality housing, isn't this in the landlords' interest and therefore helps support their reluctance to maintain housing conditions?

Thank you!

[ohthatpatrick]

Hey, there.

I think you made a good case for (A), and it definitely seems to be the 2nd best answer.

But (B) is the BEST answer. Not only is it more focused on landlords and THEIR desires/values/decisions, it also addresses BOTH pieces of reluctance.

The reluctance described in the paragraph is "reluctance to maintain quality" and "reluctance to built additional units". (B) mentions both by saying "it's hard to achieve good $$ returns on any investments in maintenance or in new construction".

At best, (A) would only give us an indirect reason why landlords are reluctant to maintain quality. It doesn't address building new units at all.

Also, tenants might prefer high-quality accommodations with rent control to low-quality accommodations with rent control. (A) doesn't address that preference.

So the part of your story where you assumed "the tenants aren't demanding better quality" isn't necessarily true.

Hope this helps.

[WaltGrace1983]

I could be mistaken, but I actually don't believe that (A) strengthens the argument at all. We are talking about two things here:

(1) reluctance to maintain quality of existing property
(2) reluctance to have additional rental-housing built

Now it is true that (A) only talks about one while (B) talks about both. That may be enough of a case to pick (B) over (A). However, I don't think that (A) necessarily even strengthens the first point but rather merely discusses it. Let me explain.

In (A) we are simply saying that tenants prefer low-quality accommodations with rent control to high-quality without rent control. However, it is not like the landlord is going to take away the rent control upon improving the quality of the housing! We would be much better off comparing two places of living that both have rent control. In doing so, we could make the case that, yea, a landlord would be reluctant to maintain quality of existing property. Look at how much better of an answer this is...

Tenants prefer low-quality accommodations with rent control to high-quality accommodations also with rent-control

From this, we could more easily make the argument that maintaining the quality should be something that a landlord is reluctant to do.

In addition, understand that we are talking about maintaining the quality of existing properties. Who is to say that those properties aren't incredibly high quality and not maintaining them would just make them marginally less so? We don't know anything about how high the quality of these places is so I would be hard-pressed to select an answer on information (low quality vs. high quality) that we simply do not know!

Even furthermore, I think when arguing for someone's position we should really refer to that someone. As mentioned, (A) focuses on the tenants when we are talking about the landlords. This is not to say that talking about the tenants should be an automatic elimination or something like that. It is merely to say that (B) is also better than (A) for that reason.