There is a saying about economists – that if you put ten of them in a room, you will get 11 opinions. Consensus amongst economists is reserved only for the most obvious, well-evidenced truisms. Yet, in a survey of 41 American professors of economics, only one had anything positive to say about rent controls. So why do politicians keep trying them?

When asked about whether rent controls have any positive impact, Richard Thaler, the former President of the American Economic Association, answered, ‘Does the sun revolve around the earth?’ Indeed, their effects are so catastrophic that most American states make it illegal for their cities to pass legislation introducing them. And disdain for rent controls is not a purely American phenomenon. The Swedish economist Assar Lindbeck, former chair of the committee for the Nobel prize in economics, once said that, ‘rent control appears to be the most efficient technique presently known to destroy a city – except for bombing.’ The evidence base stretches far and wide: rent controls have been tried and failed all across the globe over the last century. They have shrunk the rental market and left thousands without a place to live in San Francisco, New York, Finland, Sweden and, now, also in Scotland.