Rent control doomed this mayor’s re-election campaign. He has no regrets

By Nathaniel Meyersohn, CNN

New York (CNN) — Brett Smiley was elected mayor of Providence in 2022 on a pledge to build more housing and get things done in Rhode Island’s capital city.

Smiley worked closely with city and state leaders to relax restrictive zoning laws and cut red tape to make it easier to build. This textbook Yes in My Backyard (YIMBY) strategy was fueling a development boom in the city. Providence added more apartments in its latest fiscal year than in any year in two decades, 40% of them affordable.

But there was one policy that Smiley wouldn’t get behind: rent control.

Locked in a tight re-election campaign against a democratic socialist, Smiley vetoed a rent control bill passed by the Providence City Council in April. His position put him on the wrong side of a bedrock progressive policy in one of the most liberal places in America.

“I believe it is a false promise,” he said in a phone interview earlier this month. “But it’s good, cheap, easy politics.”

Smiley lost the election. It wasn’t close.

He became the first mayor in Providence’s history to lose in a primary, falling in September to David Morales, a 27-year-old state lawmaker and member of the Democratic Socialists of America. Morales, who called the veto “absolutely shameful,” is a near lock to win the general election next month. Morales pledged to sign rent control in his first 100 days.

Struggling renters across America are angry over soaring housing costs and tired of waiting. Many are desperate for quick help in the form of rent control offered by a rising generation of leaders like Morales and Zohran Mamdani of New York City — not Smiley’s hard, laborious approach of adding new supply that takes years to make a difference.

Rent control remains potent politically in big cities like New York and Los Angeles and smaller ones such as Portland, Maine, and St. Paul, Minnesota, even as the policy has a checkered history. Rent controls have been shown to limit rents for people who live in regulated apartments, but raise them for people who don’t and push down new housing construction.

Smiley, previously the chief of staff to former Rhode Island Gov. Gina Raimondo, took a hard line against rent control. He refused to negotiate with the City Council over the issue.

Providence would have become the only city in Rhode Island with rent control, and Smiley thought many developers would choose instead to build in other communities without these restrictions. The bill would make it harder to build the housing that Providence desperately needed, he said.

Providence’s housing shortage

Rhode Island has lagged far behind other states in building housing since its peak in the 1980s. From 2008 to 2015, builders received fewer than 1,000 permits a year in the state.

Providence’s rental market has come under stress from college students and higher earners from Boston, Connecticut and New York moving into the city, said Brenda Clement, the executive director of HousingWorks RI, a research and policy organization at Roger Williams University. Providence also has one of the oldest housing stocks in the country. Many apartments have become unlivable, further cutting into supply.

Providence was ranked last year as the least affordable metro for renters. Median rents have increased 40% since 2020.

The City Council hoped that capping annual rent hikes at 4% would bring some relief to renters, with carveouts for many landlords. Landlords who live in one of their properties would be partly exempt from the caps on rent increases, and new apartments would be exempt for up to 20 years. Existing apartments also would not be subject to the rent limits until five years after they were built.

“I’ve been unapologetically supportive of capping rent hikes at 4% a year because I believe our neighbors deserve that basic stability,” Morales said in an interview. Providence residents “want to make sure that they have a mayor who’s looking out for their interests, not those of corporate donors.”

The exemptions included in the bill will help ensure that developers have incentives to keep building in the city, Morales said.

Portland and St. Paul were seen as models for Providence’s version of rent control. In 2020, Portland voters approved caps on annual rent hikes tied to inflation. New home construction has continued to grow in Portland after the caps went into effect, but Portland’s mayor has expressed concerns that rent control has made it harder for landlords to maintain existing apartments.

St. Paul told a different story. In 2022, St. Paul capped annual rent increases at 3% for most apartments. New construction plunged and rents increased. St. Paul is now walking back some of its law.

Smiley and his team studied rent control policies in these cities and talked to leaders. He came away convinced that rent control “perversely would exacerbate our affordability challenges” in Providence.

Smiley isn’t sure what work he will do after leaves office. But he won’t be endorsing Morales.

“I personally don’t believe that that we should be welcoming the DSA into the Democratic Party with open arms,” Smiley said. “I’m very worried that this is a little bit like the Tea Party on the right years ago.”

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