The Washington State House has passed a bill to cap rent increases at 7 percent a year. The Senate has yet to vote on it, and the governor has not taken a position. If enacted, this law would hurt renters, including low-income renters.

Advocates of the legislation call it “rent stabilization” rather than “rent control,” because “rent control” has gotten a bad name over the years (and for good reason). But in practice, it works the same way.

Capping rents means lots of people will want to rent at the capped rate, but fewer units will be available to rent, creating a shortage. After all, owners of apartment buildings can put their units to alternative uses,  selling them off as condos, converting them to office spaces, occupying the units themselves, or simply leaving them vacant.

In the long run, rent caps encourage apartment owners to skimp on maintenance as well. So fewer units are available, and they are of lower quality

The Washington legislation exempts apartments built in the past 10 years. But the law could still discourage new apartment construction. After all, builders have to keep in mind the possibility that 10 or 15 years from now, those new units themselves will be added to rent stabilization. This is precisely what has happened in New York over and over again.

Once a place adopts rent caps, it’s very hard to un-ring the bell and make investors feel safe again about building new apartments.

Advocates of rent stabilization say that “vacancy decontrol” — letting rents adjust when a tenant moves out — makes the legislation less harmful. But rent stabilization makes tenants less likely to want to move out. That makes it harder for young people and workers moving to an area to find a place to rent, and keeps people locked into locations where it might not make sense for them to live anymore.

In markets that have had rent caps for many years, there’s even a well-known scam, described in Tom Wolfe’s Bonfire of the Vanities, whereby a renter pretends to still occupy a unit, while subletting it to someone else, to avoid vacancy decontrol.