Politics can be defined in more than one way. Dr. Chartock says on the radio that it’s all about the allocation of resources. Chancellor Von Bismarck called it “the art of the possible.” Thoreau thought of it as “the gizzard of society, full of grit and gravel,” and as a result, our country suffers from “confirmed dyspepsia.” (Where’s the lie?) In The Devil’s Dictionary, Bierce defined it both as “a strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles” and “the conduct of public affairs for private advantage.”

All of the above ring true in their own way, but politics is also a debate that’s wracked human beings for countless millennia — where’s the line between individual rights and responsibility to, and control by, the collective?

It is from the direction of that last definition which we approach the decisions made last week by Kingston’s Rent Guidelines Board. Click here for the details, but the Editorial Team will focus on the board’s decision to cut rents at the 1,300 or so apartments in its jurisdiction by 15 percent, and to grant tenants living in these apartments the ability to appeal any rent hike from 2019 onwards and, if successful, win a one-time rent adjustment.

While many cities have adopted rent control under the state’s Emergency Tenant Protection Act, Kingston was the first to not only halt rent increases where they were but to roll them back, and not by a little. Back in August, the Editorial Team supported the ETPA’s adoption in Kingston, noting that housing market forces had “fallen short in meeting the housing needs of many now-former Kingstonians,” and suggesting that “a better way to think of the Emergency Tenant Protection Act is as an Emergency Community Preservation Act.” In one of the Editorial Team’s more Marxist moments, we then chided “Kingston’s landlord class,” noting with a dollop of sanctimony that if it “had kept community preservation in mind over the past two years, laws to preserve the community would not have been forced upon them.”

But you know how it is. Sometimes when you make a big purchase — house, car, smart phone, etc. — you catch a case of “buyer’s remorse.” No matter how rational and well-planned the decision seemed when you made it, the very act of making a large financial commitment can make you wish afterwards that you hadn’t.

And to be honest, we’re feeling a little bit of that now. We wonder if the rent board hasn’t crossed the line separating individual rights and public obligation, veering from proper regulation to improper confiscation. Sticking up for landlords is not really our idea of a good time, but we worry that the collective as embodied by Kingston city government has put into play a process that will lead to “The People’s Republic of Kingston” being less of a joke and more of a truth.

Let’s bring it back from the abstract into the concrete of Kingston’s rental housing. Whatever the intentions of rent control law may be, it’s also subject, as is every human endeavor, to the law of unintended consequences. We read last month with interest and alarm reports that New York City landlords are “warehousing” (not leasing out) as many as 88,000 rent-stabilized apartments, in what some say is a bid to get the vacancy rate up to a point where a housing emergency is no longer legal. Considering the willful vacancy of buildings is already a thing in Kingston and that the validity of the survey that allowed the city to invoke the ETPA in the first place is under attack in court, it’s not a huge leap to imagine some local landlords taking the same approach as their New York City counterparts. So an already-limited housing supply could become further limited.

We also wonder what effects this digging into profit margins will have on the apartments themselves in terms of upkeep and improvement. We’re guessing it will vary from situation to situation, but if landlords can’t keep up with rising prices of everything by raising the rent, they will surely control the costs in other ways.

We also read with interest a report from a few years ago by the Brookings Institution entitled, “What does economic evidence tell us about the effects of rent control?” There’s a lot to unpack there, but let’s skip ahead to its conclusion: "Rent control appears to help affordability in the short run for current tenants, but in the long run decreases affordability, fuels gentrification, and creates negative externalities on the surrounding neighborhood,” the report reads. “These results highlight that forcing landlords to provide insurance to tenants against rent increases [i.e., rent control] can ultimately be counterproductive. If society desires to provide social insurance against rent increases, it may be less distortionary to offer this subsidy in the form of a government subsidy or tax credit. This would remove landlords’ incentives to decrease the housing supply and could provide households with the insurance [against rising rents] they desire."

To be fair, this approach has also been tried in our state (the much-reviled and now-repealed 421a tax credit program) and found to be less effective than one would’ve thought. But as we’re learning about what is beginning to look like a botched rollout of the cannabis dispensary licensing system — another well-intentioned plan to tilt the scales in favor of the underdog that may end up being tossed by a judge — if New York State government can find a way to mess something up, it will.

Time, not Instagram posts by advocacy groups nor amateur philosophizing in editorials, will tell if rent control does what it’s intended. For tenants who get relief from it, it’s a blessing that shouldn’t be minimized. But as another great mind said once, not even the very wise can predict all the outcomes. The city should prepare to be flexible so the worst might be avoided.