Dr. Ella Kavanagh:

One of the issues with controls is they can actually have the effect of reducing supply. If one has a rent control in place, economists would argue this could have the effect of reducing the amount of accommodation actually supplied on to the market, even as is, even at this moment. That would be one of the arguments against using rent controls. At the same time, by having a lower rent one could have, dare I see it, a much greater demand. I personally believe the issue really comes down to increasing the supply, focusing in on that and trying as much as possible to increase the supply of housing accommodation because it clearly is one of the major issues behind this and behind what we are seeing with rents. To reiterate the point about rental costs, in the CPI information is given about rental increases. What we have seen is although rental prices came down somewhat at the start of the pandemic, we now see them accelerating once again. Even if there are controls in place or some measure controlling them, there might be ways of bypassing that. We are definitely seeing rental rates increasing again.