It costs a lot to rent an apartment in Colorado these days. Let’s just hope the state’s lawmakers don’t step in and try to “do something” about it. The result is likely to put housing out of reach for even more would-be renters.

Rent control — soft-pedaled nowadays under euphemisms like “rent stabilization” or “inclusionary zoning” — would be a disaster if imposed on Coloradans. It has backfired wherever else it has been attempted in the country.

Artificially capping rent in hopes of helping some renters will raise rent for everyone else and slow construction of new rental units. Capping rent for everyone throughout a community is guaranteed to bring new construction to a grinding halt. The rentals that already exist, meanwhile, will decay as landlords no longer will be able to cover the cost of keeping them up.

In other words, the rental market will collapse. Especially with the return of runaway inflation — prices have soared 9.1% since a year ago, according to the latest news reports — the last thing Colorado needs is more dollars chasing even fewer places to rent. It’s a recipe yet higher inflation.

Just about all politicians understand that — including the pols who push to implement rent-control policies on our housing. They know better, but they can’t resist the urge to score political points given rent control’s superficial appeal. It makes them appear compassionate; never mind that it defies the gravity of basic economics and is doomed to fail.

That’s why rent control is a gift that keeps on giving — to cynical, manipulative politicians — while it keeps on taking from rank-and-file renters. And those politicians always can count some well-intended but ill-informed activists for backup. Hence, the small rally staged this past weekend at the State Capitol by a housing-advocacy group.

A few dozen demonstrators on the Capitol steps held placards, made speeches and gave quotes to the press calling on the legislature to repeal a state law that has protected Colorado renters from the voodoo economics of rent control since 1981. The law prevents local governments from regulating rent on housing — a much-needed prohibition considering there always are local governments gullible enough, or reckless enough, to try rent control.

As The Gazette recounted in its coverage of the media event, rent control has blown up on the housing market where it has been tried. Stanford University economist Rebecca Diamond studied San Francisco’s notorious attempt at rent control and concluded it “decreases affordability, fuels gentrification, and creates negative spillovers on the surrounding neighborhood.” Diamond’s research found that, among other unintended consequences, existing rental housing was converted to pricier, owner-occupied condos, or replaced altogether with new buildings that weren’t for rent, just to escape rent control.

There are some members of Colorado’s legislature who are self-serving enough to support rent control in the next session; a few might even be naive enough to really believe in it. If the Democratic majority is misguided enough to pass a bill repealing the 1981 safeguard against rent control, Gov. Jared Polis — a savvy and successful business entrepreneur who certainly understands the damage it would do — should veto it.

Polis threatened a veto of legislation on mobile home parks this year over a rent-control provision that the bill’s authors wound up removing. So, he gets it. He should make sure the legislature gets it, too.

Denver Gazette editorial board