Youth Displacement in Rent-Controlled Housing: The Consequences of Housing Queues

Herman Donner ()
Additional contact information
Herman Donner: Department of Real Estate and Construction Management, Royal Institute of Technology, Postal: Teknikringen 10B, 100 44 Stockholm, Sweden

No 24/6, Working Paper Series from Royal Institute of Technology, Department of Real Estate and Construction Management & Banking and Finance

Abstract: The method of allocating below-market-rent apartments significantly influences the outcomes of rent control policies. While queuing systems may appear fairer than allocation by landlord preferences, they disadvantage younger households. An analysis of over 71,000 rental contracts mediated by Stockholm’s housing queue from 2003 to 2023 reveals two key trends. First, there has been a decline in young tenants as the average queue time increases. In the city center, the share of leases to tenants aged 18–30 dropped from 12.7% in 2003 to 4.4% in 2023, while leases to tenants aged 60+ increased from 4.9% to 22.2%. Second, younger tenants pay higher rents than older tenants. Because apartments with lower rents require longer queue times, older households benefit. A 30-year-old renting a two-room apartment in the city center is estimated to pay 29.2% more than a 60-year-old for a comparable unit in 2023. These findings show that queueing systems disproportionately benefit older households as rent controls become more severe.

Keywords: rent control; housing queues; housing policy; displacement (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D40 R21 R28 R31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 36 pages
Date: 2024-06-24, Revised 2024-12-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://kth.diva-portal.org/smash/record.jsf?pid=diva2:1875952 Full text (application/pdf)
https://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:kth:diva-348385 Full text (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hhs:kthrec:2024_006

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Paper Series from Royal Institute of Technology, Department of Real Estate and Construction Management & Banking and Finance Department of Real Estate and Construction Management, Royal Institute of Technology, Teknikringen 10B, 100 44 Stockholm, Sweden. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Cecilia Hermansson ().