Instead of just my coat rack greeting me last week, I had a letter from Borger Management, the company that manages my apartment building and dozens of others in the District. Usually, the only things that are slipped under my door are package pick-up notices and take-out menus, so I was suspicious. In a craftily-worded letter, the company gave a full-out endorsement of the D.C. City Council’s possible elimination of the current rent ceiling regulations. In a rather slanted first sentence, the company asserts “For the first time in decades, the City Council
is improving the District’s rent control laws.” Improving, really? It was late at night, but I was already skeptical that my management company would be compelled to bring such good tidings to my door unless they were going to be benefiting in some way.

Theoretically, price ceilings, what the District now uses for “rent control”, limit how high rent can go and aid in the amount of affordable housing available in an area. Various cities in the country have such systems in effect, but some cities, like Boston, have decided to revoke them altogether. Price floors, such as those applied to some agricultural goods in the United States, occur when supply exceeds demand and keeps prices from dipping too low. Looking past the public relations jargon of the management company, taking away limitations on how high rent can go seems like a bad idea. I’ve worked in press offices before and this letter was spun so tightly that I had a hard time figuring out truth from fiction; the tell-tale sign of some fine propaganda.