Not to sound like a complete dick, but... duh? Is this a controversial opinion really from a finance perspective? I was under the impression that almost all arguments surrounding rent control are:
1) Moral/legal arguments
2) Whether rent control is the small problem and lack of housing development due to zoning laws or NIMBYism or conspiracy or whatever is the much bigger problem - i.e. rent control is one small facet of the housing issues in SF.
The solution where each participant in a market acts to optimize their own returns is sometimes nowhere near the global optimum allocation of resources (for basically _any_ theory of optimum allocation other than "whatever the market did").
1) Moral/legal arguments
2) Whether rent control is the small problem and lack of housing development due to zoning laws or NIMBYism or conspiracy or whatever is the much bigger problem - i.e. rent control is one small facet of the housing issues in SF.