We spent the day in Olympia trying to get the point across that support for House Bill 2583 is support for rent control. It was a long day. I’m posting this video because it is so incredibly biased. Really? Community leaders? What community leaders? I have a lot of respect for reporters who have to cram a complicated issue into two minutes, but in this case it seems like rent control is the obvious medicine for the disease of housing scarcity. It isn’t. We know the solution for that.

And I’m posting it because this report has me saying the key message:

If you want to affect price the best thing to do is not more regulation, more rules, more limits and restrictions, but more housing, more housing, more housing.

And we had dozens of small time landlords (one had his car break down and had to have it towed) ready to testify, but the chair of the committee, Representative Laurie Jenkins didn’t let any of them talk.

Somehow the chair of this committee decided that real landlords shouldn’t have the stage even in 30 second increments. The hearing yesterday wasn’t much of a hearing.

Rent control doesn’t work.  Rent control is bad policy. But rent control is good politics. We won’t stop making this case even if we don’t get a fair hearing.