Regular as Daylight Savings Time, the forces advocating for more affordable housing raise the eternal promise of rent control to address our housing ills. Four years ago, in response to a series of hearings held by the Massachusetts Legislature, I published a four-part essay about the history, promise, and peril of rent control. This year, a ‘new’ rent control proposal is climbing Beacon Hill, as a November ballot question. Recently Mayor Michelle Wu (universally appreciated and loved) provided some support for the endeavor. That makes it a real possibility. So, once again, I will try to dispel the fantasy that rent control will lower housing costs or lead to more housing development.

Rent control does one thing very well. It protects people already living in rental housing. Their rents stabilize. They enjoy relative savings. They tend not to move. They may suffer the downside that, over time, rent controlled housing, being less profitable to the owner, endures deferred maintenance, but most renters will accept that tradeoff (to a point) for lower rent.

The downsides of that stabilization are significant. People who don’t already live in a rental unit will have a harder time finding one. Less new housing will get built because it’s less profitable. The housing market will lock up.

Rent control can be a bonus for local politicians. Long-term renters—beneficiaries of the policy—will be more inclined to vote to maintain their perk. Those frozen out of the market, lacking a local address and therefore also lacking a local vote, find their voices literally unheard. The last time we had rent control in Massachusetts, in the 1990’s, it had dwindled down to three cities: Boston; Brookline; Cambridge. At the time 70% of Cambridge residents were renters, the vast majority of them in rent-controlled units. That fact shaped the politics of the city until the State ballot question pulled rent control out from local control.

What has happened to Cambridge since is an illustration of what happens when we go from strict rent control to nothing at all. The city, which had deteriorating housing stock for decades, is now so spruced up—and so expensive—it’s flipped from an enclave where long-term renters run the show to one where only the rich can enter.

Where’s the middle ground? The free market is not going to provide enough housing for all, especially given all the obstacles that Massachusetts cities and towns throw in front of new development. But rent control is no panacea, since we know from experience how it stymies development.

The path toward adequate housing for all will require give and take on everyone’s part. It will require more public investment in low- and moderate-income housing. It will require reduced zoning restrictions. It will require simpler development processes. But it will also require changes in our expectations of what constitutes appropriate housing. In a country where 25% of households have a single person. where the amount of square feet per person continues to grow, and there’s a public health crisis of isolation and loneliness, we need to invest alternate forms of congregate housing. To provide adequate housing for all, we have to move beyond the extravagant expectations portrayed nightly on HGTV.

Rent control sounds like a great way get as grip on our housing woes. It’s a simple, sweeping move that requires no public money. But history has shown that rent control does not create more housing, or more housing equity.