In Rhode Island’s Dem Primary, DSA Challenger Unseats Providence Mayor Who’d Vetoed Rent Control

A majority of Democratic voters in Providence, Rhode Island, signaled support for aggressive rent regulation by voting for state Rep. David Morales over incumbent Mayor Brett Smiley in Wednesday’s primary election. 

Morales, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America (who nevertheless did not receive the local chapter’s endorsement in the primary), ran on a progressive housing policy platform that called for capping rents at 4 percent annually and limiting corporate ownership of housing. 

He captured 52.4 percent of the primary vote, enough to comfortably unseat Smiley, who’d vetoed a city council-approved rent stabilization ordinance in April of this year. 

Smiley argued throughout the campaign that the city council’s ordinance he’d vetoed, which would have capped rents at 4 percent per year for multifamily properties with five or more units that are at least 11 years old, would tank the new construction necessary to keep rents down. 

Landlords could petition for rent increases of up to 10 percent to compensate for their own rising costs. 

“Rent control doesn’t lower anybody’s rent,” said Smiley during an August debate. “There are people struggling today. The root cause of that is a shortage of housing.” 

He cited Saint Paul, Minnesota, where a voter-passed rent control ordinance caused developers to cancel in-progress projects, as a cautionary tale of rent control gone wrong. 

Morales argued rent control was a necessary immediate solution to rising rents. 

In that August debate, Morales argued that the city council’s rent control ordinance included the exemptions necessary to prevent any reduction in new construction. 

His campaign website cites Portland, Maine, where housing construction increased immediately after city voters approved a rent control policy and increased the required percentage of affordable housing new projects must include, as a counterexample to the Saint Paul scenario. 

As I’ve covered before, Portland’s brief post-2020 surge in permitting almost exclusively involved projects that were not subject to the city’s new affordability mandates. More recent reporting shows that construction has since plummeted in Portland. 

Even with the exemptions, Providence’s vetoed rent control ordinance would still have been among the strictest policies in the country. Older rent control policies typically include a permanent exemption for new construction. More recently passed rent control policies in places like California and Oregon exempt new construction for a period of 15 years. 

The city council’s ordinance also did not allow for additional increases whenever a unit became vacant. 

Supporters of rent control have been quick to paint Morales’ victory as a sign of voters’ support for a more progressive Democratic Party. 

“We’re seeing that the voters across this country are eager for not only a change, but also for a vision of something that we are fighting for,” said New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani after the primary. 

Mamdani may well be correct that Morales’ victory is a bellwether for Democrats’ demand for a more socialist approach to housing policy. 

That should be deeply concerning for people who do care about sustainably bringing housing costs down. 

Smiley is no free market ideologue. He was a liberal mayor of a liberal city. 

In that August debate, he positively cited the fact that one-fifth of new units built in Providence were deed-restricted affordable units. (As I’ve argued before, a high percentage of a city’s new units being deed-restricted is normally a sign that regulation is suppressing a lot of new construction activity.) 

Even this approach was not statist enough to inspire Democratic primary voters. They opted for the candidate who supports binding price controls. 

Should the city council and its new mayor succeed in adopting those price controls, they can expect the usual results of lower housing construction and declining housing quality.