On Tuesday, Fillmore voters will decide on Measure F, which would free the developer of a mobile home park to subdivide it for individual sale while imposing rent control on the remaining units. Not surprisingly, the developer that owns the park is the chief supporter of Measure F, which is not endorsed by the Ventura County Star. But the concept of rent control, introduced in Measure F as a sweetener to make it more palatable for residents, is one of those misguided economic policies that sounds good to the ear but doesn’t stand up to scrutiny.

The purpose of rent control is to place a ceiling on the rent paid to a landowner. Usually, and as is the case with Measure F, fixed-income seniors and the “working class” are cited as its chief beneficiaries. Ironically, they are the very people hurt most by it.

To understand the economic consequences of rent control, we must briefly examine how supply relates to demand, which is the beating heart of economics. Fortunately, you don’t need a doctorate degree to comprehend it. In recent decades, ivory-tower professors have unnecessarily made economics into a dense, incomprehensible science, when nothing more than common sense is required to grasp its fundamental principles—particularly with how supply interacts with demand to produce prices.

When supply outpaces demand, prices decrease. When demand outpaces supply, prices increase. For example, if there is a bumper crop of apples in a given season, and the supply of apples outpaces the demand for them (i.e. the shelves of grocery stores are full of them), then prices will fall. You’ll get cheap apples.

That’s it—if you grasp that concept then you can master economics, and by building logically upon that foundation you’ll understand why rent control doesn’t work as advertised.

Staying with the apples example, we know that grocery stores will lower prices for apples so that they do not rot on the shelves. The lower prices will entice people to maximize the amount of apples that are purchased. Seniors and the “working class” get cheap apples and everyone is happy.

But what happens when adverse weather conditions result in a reduced apple crop? The same people want apples, but there aren’t enough of them to go around. The grocery stores will realize that they will pay more for apples in this environment than they would when there isn’t an apple shortage, so they will increase prices (remember, when demand outpaces supply, prices rise). Producers realize that they can get more money for their apple crop and so temporarily produce more apples or find it worthwhile to pay for higher freight costs and ship them from greater distances, helping to alleviate the supply problem and preventing prices from skyrocketing (a way that the free market corrects itself).

But before the market corrects itself, the government, feeling sympathy for fixed-income seniors and the “working class”, might step in. Everyone has a right to apples, it says, and so it tell the grocery stores to stop “price gouging” and forces them to only charge what they charged during the bumper-crop season.

This is precisely how rent control is thrust upon us, and the results are the same. The supply of apples is sharply reduced as cheap apples fly off the shelves. Eventually there are no more apples. Producers have no incentive to rush apples to the market because they can’t charge higher prices. And so if people are desperate enough for apples, they will wait in long lines at the grocery store to get them when they trickle in.

It is a basic economic principle that price controls result in shortages and long lines.

Substituting housing for apples, we see the economic principle in action. Rent prices creep upward, taking a toll on seniors and the “working class”. The government feels pressure to alleviate their suffering, and so they impose rent control. Investment money stops flowing into development, development ceases, reducing the supply of housing. Cheaper housing means more demand while producing less supply.

Normally in this condition prices would increase, but since by law they cannot, we instead get a shortage of housing, more people wanting cheap housing, resulting in long lines. Have you heard of waiting lists to get into rent-controlled housing?

Those residents lucky enough to have secured a rent-controlled unit then stay there forever, further reducing the supply of housing. If there are areas in the community where there is not rent control, the rental prices there skyrocket, injuring everyone in the community. Businesses are even harmed as low-wage workers can no longer afford to live anywhere but the rent-controlled area, and they can’t wait on the ever-growing waiting list.

And so the people that would buy the “rent control is good” argument present in Measure F would impose rent control at the expense of the community as a whole.