The 'Socialist Surge' Meets the Facts: Small Numbers, Unpopular Ideas and a Housing Record That Hurts Renters

The Democratic Socialists of America are celebrating. "DSA just had our biggest election cycle ever," co-chair Ashik Siddique said after last week's midterms, according to Just the News. The group's official publication hailed what it called a socialist surge, claiming more than 100 DSA-endorsed winners in 37 states, The National Pulse reported.

Let us state their case fairly. Six new DSA-backed members are headed to the House: Darializa Avila Chevalier and Claire Valdez of New York, Melat Kiros of Colorado, Angela Gonzales-Torres of California, Donavan McKinney of Michigan and Chris Rabb of Pennsylvania, joining Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rashida Tlaib, Just the News reported. Hundreds of DSA-backed candidates won local offices. Their agenda includes Medicare for All, abolishing ICE, state-owned grocery stores and an arms embargo against Israel, according to the reporting. Kiros, who ousted a 30-year incumbent in her primary, lists Medicare for All, Housing First, universal child care and an arms embargo on her campaign site.

That is the claim. Here are the facts.

Eight members is a caucus, not a revolution. Democrats won more than 250 House seats, Just the News reported, which means the DSA bloc would make up only a small slice of the new majority. House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries said in August that he does not support the DSA agenda, and Just the News reported that he could lose all eight DSA votes and still win the speakership.

The country is not moving their way, either. Gallup polling cited by Just the News found 57 percent of Americans view socialism negatively and 39 percent positively. Voters handed Democrats a majority to deal with prices and paychecks, not a mandate for government-run grocery stores.

Housing sits at the center of the socialist pitch, from Housing First platforms to promises of affordable homes. The anger behind that pitch is real. Just this week, millions of workers in Spain walked off the job in a general strike demanding action on the housing crisis and the rising cost of living, France 24 reported. Families in America feel the same squeeze.

But the remedy the left reaches for first, rent control, has been tested, and the results are in.

When San Francisco expanded rent control to smaller apartment buildings in 1994, Stanford economist Rebecca Diamond and her co-authors tracked what happened. Landlords reduced the supply of rental housing by 15 percent, by converting buildings to condominiums, selling to owner-occupants and redeveloping, the study found, and the lost rental housing likely drove up market rents across the city over the long run. The study, published in the American Economic Review, also found real short-term benefits for tenants who already held rent-controlled apartments: they were less likely to be displaced.

Diamond summed up the tradeoff for Brookings: rent control helps some tenants in the short run, but "in the long run it decreases affordability". The new, higher-end housing that replaced rental units attracted residents with at least 18 percent higher incomes, she wrote, the opposite of what rent control's champions intend. And when Cambridge, Massachusetts, ended rent control after a 1994 referendum, the market values of formerly controlled properties rose 45 percent, and property values across the city rose by about $2 billion over the following decade, according to research she summarized. Freed from price caps, owners invested in their buildings again.

The lesson is not that renters should be left to struggle. It is that the cure for high prices is more homes. Faster permits, fewer rules about what can be built and where, respect for property rights and policies that make ownership possible for young families will do more for renters than any cap ever has. The church that runs a housing ministry, the builder who wants to put up a duplex and the young couple saving for a first home all need the same thing: room to build.

Socialism promises fairness and delivers scarcity. That is not a slogan. It is what the San Francisco data show.

Voters, first of all: most Americans still reject socialism by a wide margin. Democratic leaders, second: Jeffries has kept the DSA agenda at arm's length. And economists across the spectrum, whose research on rent control has held up for decades.

The first test comes in January, when the new House chooses a speaker. Gonzales-Torres has said she is a no for now, Just the News reported. Watch whether the DSA bloc tries to extract promises on housing and health care in exchange for votes, and watch whether Democratic leaders follow the evidence or the slogans.