Rent control is in play here I believe to prevent price gouging. Some companies are not very moral/ethical when it comes to tenants. I would argue that the fairer thing (when Rent Control is in place) for owners might be that they can discontinue the contract when it expires but they also forfeit the right to rent that unit for a period of time (like 6 mo or 1 yr). Owners have some right to reclaim the property for own use but then are discouraged from flipping the unit and just reusing it the same way with different people.
When I rented in Boston from operating companies, they always increased rent the maximum allowed every opportunity allowed. This encouraged a lot of churn in the area I lived which I don't think was good for the area. I also had a lot of problems with them never fixing appliances so I moved out. When I started renting directly from personal owners and allowed to go month-to-month then we were both happy and the owners generally never increased rent unless when their costs also increased.
Sure, i understand the moral/ethical part, and i'm generally in favor of preventing price gouging. But the vast majority of complaints i've seen are more "my rent increased from 3000 to 4000", when all the other rents in the area are $4000.
I had a bad experience myself renting in boston, that involved the health inspector fining the operating company about 20k.
Wait, really? You're in favor of artificial pricing constraints to avoid "gouging"? Doesn't virtually every reputable economist believe that those constraints decrease the supply of housing? The moral dimension to rent control seems just as dubious as the legal one!
When I say price gouging, i mean the economic definition, which is a very very specific thing:
IE when a coercive monopoly raise prices to levels that wouldn't exist if there was competition.
This does not decrease the supply of housing, because it's a monopoly, they are doing it because they can, not because supply is low.
When I rented in Boston from operating companies, they always increased rent the maximum allowed every opportunity allowed. This encouraged a lot of churn in the area I lived which I don't think was good for the area. I also had a lot of problems with them never fixing appliances so I moved out. When I started renting directly from personal owners and allowed to go month-to-month then we were both happy and the owners generally never increased rent unless when their costs also increased.