The trouble with bureaucrats, usually, is when they stir themselves, they tend to get in the way of business to the detriment of the economy.

Take those at the Rent Board, which really is a relic of the past - a throwback to when people were against enterprise. Profit supposedly was bad and every bureaucrat dreamt of having a hand in the market.

Then, though, as is so often the case, too many cooks spoil the broth.

In this case, the broth is residential real estate. For many years, there was very little construction in that sector. And houses built were certainly not for rent. Many of the houses that attract tenants generate income that is artifically capped well below the nominal and real rates of inflation.

Real sufferers

The real sufferers here were the very people whom the bureaucrats, by their accretion, their ham-fisted use of power, claimed to be protecting. Often, property owners are not allowed to make money from rental income; they did not build for this purpose. So, with few houses available to rent, potential tenants had to compete for vacant properties. When these properties were in fact found, despite the best efforts of the commissars, they were at a premium.

It didn't end there, though. This bureaucratic intrusion by the Rent Board undermined the construction industry, with the loss of employment and substantial economic activity. And construction is one of the areas of the economy, when it is up and running, that easily absorbs a large chunk of Jamaica's unskilled or semi-skilled labour force.

Gladly, for a while, the Rent Board went into a sort of hibernation. Or so we thought, unaware that its sulking bureaucrats, only partially chastened by the times, were waiting to reassert themselves, as they now are attempting to do.

Now they want to strengthen the outmoded Rent Restriction Act to restrain landlords from seeking more than one month's security deposit from tenants. Landlords usually require such payments as security against damage to their properties. Too often, tenants vacate properties without meeting their obligations. Indeed, landlords are not the only ones to apply such deposits, which are a feature in utility contracts.

Real effect

The real effect of the Rent Board's intiative, if it is entertained by the minister and the Parliament, will be to impinge on the market and diminish the capacity for people to create contracts between themselves, in favour of the dictate of the state.

The rental market, after all, is no monopoly or even an oligopoly All that changed when the bureaucrats were in retreat. There is no case, in that regard, as spurious as it would have been, for the protection of tenants.

If a landlord demands too much by way of rent or security deposit, a tenant does not have to comply. He has options in the marketplace. He requires no shepherding by the Rent Board.

We suspect that there are a few things that government bureaucrats might do, but attempting to be the hand of the market is certainly not one of them. Indeed, the Rent Board performed better when it was in hibernation. That should be made permanent, better still, by disbandment.

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