JAMES SCHNEIDER: Rent Control Devalues the Whole Neighborhood. “A home’s value is not just determined by its own condition, but also by the attributes of the entire community. If your neighbor’s landlord lets his building fall into disrepair, it might negatively effect you. Over time, rent control can gradually make the neighborhood a less appealing place to live. This impact will be magnified to the extent that higher income neighbors are themselves an amenity. A forthcoming JPE piece quantifies how rent control reduces the property values of not just controlled properties but surrounding properties as well. It does this by studying what happened in Cambridge, Massachusetts, after the state legislature suddenly eliminated rent control in 1995.”