Resource context
“Balancing Rent Control and Property Rights” is an article published by Verfassungsblog, described on the page as a global forum for scholarly debate at the interface of academy and society, focused on public law in an international, interdisciplinary, open-access format. The authors are Allegra Grillo (Ph.D. student, University of Genoa), Arnulfo Daniel Mateos Durán (postdoctoral researcher, University of Genoa), and Alessio Sardo (full professor at the University of Genoa and principal investigator). All three are described as research members of the ERC HABITAT project on how European big cities and legal systems trigger urban inequality.
Housing-market pressure across Europe
The article frames rent control debates within a sharp rise in housing costs across the EU. It cites Eurostat data showing that between 2010 and the first quarter of 2025, EU house prices increased by 57.9% and rents by 27.8%. The text links these increases to market speculation, inflation, and the rapid expansion of short-term rentals, alongside longer-term trends since the 2008 financial crash and policy choices described as deregulation and welfare retrenchment.
Supply constraints and tenant vulnerability
The piece argues that housing production slowed while public housing stock was sold off or allowed to decay, increasing reliance on market allocation. It uses city-level indicators to illustrate strain: in London, the rent-to-income ratio is cited as nearly 38%, and in Berlin average rents are said to have more than doubled in the last decade. It also points to eviction requests in Italy from 1983 to 2022, noting a clear rise in arrears-related cases and that arrears increasingly became the leading cause over the decades.
Why rent control returns—and why it is contested
Against this background, rent controls are presented as a recurring policy response aimed at stabilising rents, curbing speculation, and protecting tenants. The article emphasises that these measures often attract constitutional litigation because they restrict landlords’ ability to use and profit from property. The core legal test is described as balancing social objectives against property-right protections in national constitutions and in Article 1 of Protocol 1 of the European Convention on Human Rights (peaceful enjoyment of possessions), which requires a legitimate public aim, proportionality, and a “fair balance.”
Strasbourg guidance: Hutten-Czapska v. Poland
A central reference point is the 2006 European Court of Human Rights case Hutten-Czapska v. Poland. The article describes a regime where regulated rents did not cover basic maintenance costs and landlords lacked compensation and eviction options. The Court found a disproportionate burden on the owner, concluding that rent regulation is not inherently unlawful but must preserve meaningful economic use and avoid de facto expropriation without remedy. 🇩🇪🇫🇷🇮🇹 National constitutional approaches Germany’s Federal Constitutional Court is described as having extensive rent-control jurisprudence anchored in Article 14 of the Basic Law, repeatedly affirming that property includes the right to derive income from rental agreements. Berlin’s 2020 Mietendeckel was annulled primarily on legislative-competence grounds, while still signalling that rent control can be permissible if enacted by the proper authority and without making property economically useless. In France, the Conseil constitutionnel is portrayed as generally deferential in social and economic policy review. In a decision on the Loi ALUR, it upheld rent caps in shortage areas as pursuing a legitimate public aim (access to housing), while invalidating a narrow rule on rent supplements for “exceptional features.” In Italy, the Corte Costituzionale is presented as weighing housing’s social function against property as a subjective right, sometimes upholding and sometimes striking down rent restrictions, and stressing that market stabilisation burdens should not fall unfairly on owners.
Overall implication for affordability policy
Across these jurisdictions, the article concludes that courts accept rental-market intervention for social purposes but set strict boundaries, with particular emphasis on owners’ ability to earn income (ius fructus). It argues this constitutional framing tends to favour narrow, temporary measures and can constrain ambitious, long-term rent regulation aimed at broad affordability, influencing the political feasibility of stronger tenant protections.