In 1919, Washington, D.C. became the first city in the U.S. to get rent control — in part because of how the housing crisis of the 1910s intersected with the global “Spanish flu” pandemic. Read my short piece on this history, “Defending Tenants in the Midst of Plague,” in a special issue of Washington History dedicated to a historical analysis of the year 2020.

At right: 1919 article from the Washington Post, lambasting the rapacity of landlords in the midst of the pandemic.