Everyone wants affordable housing. This is why, as housing providers, we fear for the future for Colorado renters with HB23-1115 on the horizon. The legislature proposes to repeal a 40-year-old rent control ban in the state of Colorado. This policy was enacted to ensure local governments would not consider making the same mistakes a few U.S. cities have made – implementing rent control and unintentionally fueling the housing shortage and risking the sustainability of rental housing in our state.

If HB23-1115 were to pass, it would jeopardize any reality of having a healthy rental housing market. Rent control suffocates the free market. By implementing draconian restrictions, there is no incentive to build new housing, therefore stripping away the only real solution to the current housing shortage – building new housing.

Rental housing prices ebb and flow to match the always changing economy. When rental costs increase, it is usually due to other factors such as supply, demand, external housing costs and legal restrictions. In short, rental prices are simply a matter of economics.

Ms. Baca-Oehlert’s opinion piece asserts on behalf of a teacher’s union that our organization, Colorado Apartment Association, has the power to “jack up rental rates” based on some kind of price-fixing by dominant national and multinational corporations. The market simply doesn’t work that way.

If rental housing providers artificially ask for more rent than their properties are worth in the market, then consumers don’t rent them. Vacancy rates go up and profitability correspondingly decreases, leading to rent price cuts. Our industry can no more create artificially high prices than local governments can artificially create low prices.

Some economic factors – including dramatically increased interest rates and high inflation in the labor and materials markets – that prevent the supply of housing units from catching up with demand are beyond the control of local and state governments. However, there are artificial limitations caused by local government hostility to new housing units. These impediments come in many different varieties, including: outright artificial caps on growth; succumbing to neighborhood objections to change of all types (including dense housing); requirements for portions of a development to be rented at below market rates; height limitations; unreasonable parking requirements; excessive requirements for accessible units beyond the demand for those units;  requirements for electrification beyond the point of economic or technological feasibility; approval delays, unreasonable impact studies; and excessive impact and development fees. All these policies chase legitimate concerns and goals, but they have the net effect of making it more difficult and more expensive to produce a housing unit.

Rent control has unintended, yet avoidable consequences. Proponents support rent control without looking to the evidence it will only hurt the people it intends to help. It has failed everywhere it has been tried. The only way to create stability in the housing market is by creating incentives for more housing infrastructure. Regardless of who you are, where you live, or what your income level is, more housing infrastructure will make the rental housing market more affordable for everyone.

There are countless examples of rent control policies in the U.S. failing time and time again. In Denver, we have seen how new rental limitations are already stifling the market. In July of last year, the City and County of Denver implemented a new “Affordable Housing” ordinance, which required any new housing developments to include a certain percentage of low-income units. In the three months following implementation of that ordinance, permit applications in Denver fell more than 88%.

One of the ironic things about the teachers’ union weighing in on rent control their members become the economic losers in a rent control or mandated affordable housing environment. These programs almost invariably target housing for people making less than 60% of average median income. The typical “affordable housing” program results in 80% of the residents paying 10% more rent so 20% of the lower income residents get a 40% artificial reduction in rent. An entry-level schoolteacher makes 72% of average median income (“AMI”).  Teachers, along with entry-level police officers (at 90% of AMI), entry-level firefighters (96% AMI) and entry-level nurses (101% AMI) are the ones who end up paying artificially higher rents under these programs. Teachers’ union members are hurt more than most by the price fixing programs they are advocating for.

We all want affordable housing. Rent control policies simply don’t work – and passing this legislation in Colorado will hurt the already strained housing market. A study from the City and County of Pueblo several years ago showed building new housing helps the market for all types of housing – driving costs down for both low-income and high-level buildings, and giving people more choices on where to live. We need our elected representatives to provide incentives for building more housing, not pushing policies that will have the opposite effect.

Mark T. Williams is executive vice president of the Apartment Association of Metro Denver.