Crosscut, a local non-profit publication affiliated with PBS station KCTS 9, recently published an article on the Bellingham minimum wage and rent control initiatives on this November’s ballot. In the article the writer quotes initiative sponsor Jace Cotton stating that the initiatives would “go a long way to preventing homelessness in our community.”

Regarding the rent control measure, engaging in simplistic first-order thinking might lead one to believe that requiring landlords to pay a large fee to tenants if they raise rents above a threshold will reduce homelessness. However, looking at the deeper impacts and real-world data shows that it will devastate lower income tenants and increase homelessness.

Proponents of the measure such as Mr. Cotton offer no evidence or data to support the claim that its requirements would prevent or reduce homelessness. As we show in our Washington Policy Center Citizen’s Guide for this initiative, the real-world impact of a similar Portland, Oregon ordinance – from which the Bellingham proponents have copied the language almost verbatim – has been negative. During the period in which the Portland relocation fee measure had full effect the number of single family detached rental units in the city of Portland declined from 27,656 units to 23,669, a loss of 3,987 units or 14%.

The exact Portland measure that this initiative copies caused the vacancy rate to plummet. Homelessness in Portland during the period increased.  Low vacancy rates are explicitly acknowledged in the text of the Bellingham initiative as a cause for housing unaffordability, so there is no support for its sponsors to claim such a measure has been successful elsewhere.

This initiative ignores the root of the housing unaffordability problem that is damaging the lives of the poor and increasing homelessness: housing supply shortages in the face of population growth. Those shortages are caused by a myriad of zoning and other regulations which go unaddressed in this initiative. Rather, this initiative as with other rent control measures further disincentivizes builders and landlords and real-world results demonstrate that will further restrict housing supply and contribute to increased homelessness – regardless of the baseless sound bites initiative sponsors provide to the press.