Rolling windows, closed doors: Mobility and tenure effects of Oregon’s statewide rent stabilization policy

This paper provides the first causal evidence on the effects of a statewide rent stabilization regime in the United States. Oregon Senate Bill 608 (2019) caps annual rent increases at 7 percent plus the local consumer price index, a permissive cap that rarely binds at the unit level. Despite this, I find large behavioral responses. Using a rolling-window difference-in-differences design that exploits the staggered entry of building vintages into coverage, I find that renters in covered buildings became 33 to 62 percent less likely to move across one-, two-, and three-year horizons, with effects growing over time consistent with gradual lock-in. Households in covered buildings exhibit a relative increase in homeownership of approximately 5 percent overall and 8 percent in urban areas. The cap’s direct effect on rents was modest in aggregate, suppressing rent growth by approximately 4 to 5 percent on average and 9 to 10 percent in two- and three-bedroom rentals where the cap had the most bite. The behavioral responses are several times larger than the direct rent effect, suggesting that tenants and landlords respond to the existence of a stabilization regime in addition to its immediate pricing constraint. The analysis uses 580,897 American Community Survey household observations for Oregon (2010–2024) with within-Oregon robustness checks and out-of-state synthetic control validation.