Prices are a signal, and price changes are how market participants can determine which way supply and demand curves are moving.

By legislating prices and price changes, the signal is muddied, and market participants cannot take action to match the movements of the supply and demand curves.

Prop 13’s property tax rate increase cap is also price fixing. These kinds of laws are mostly ways to enrich and reward those who got or were born somewhere first, and run counter to the vaunted meritocracy that a so called free market can encourage.

Edit: The most helpful thing the government can do is maximize price transparency, so the smaller entity can be on equal footing with the bigger entity about which way prices are moving. Tenant agreements should be public record, like land sales are, and that would not only help cops with kicking out squatters, but also give renters more power in negotiations.