The purposes of this paper are to produce more precise estimates of the effect of rent control on homelessness using microdata on housed and homeless households and to provide evidence concerning the mechanisms through which rent control might affect homelessness. Our results suggest that rent control does increase homelessness by decreasing the rental vacancy rate and increasing the rental price of housing in the uncontrolled sector but that these effects of rent control are offset by other effects that decrease homelessness. We cannot reject the hypothesis that rent control has no net effect on homelessness. (Authors)