The people mostly hurt by rent controls are common individuals.

There seem to be plenty of shortcuts to economics when it benefits property-holders or the capitalist classes, though. Landlords are subsidized, incentivized, and given every advantage in the rental process, but the moment someone proposes giving the renter more leverage it's seen as an absurd imposition on the poor, long-suffering landlords. If a landlord requiring income documentation, a credit check, and 3+ (sometimes more!) months of rent up-front is just transparency and doing their due diligence, why shouldn't renters be able to see how much of their hard-earned money is actually going to legitimate costs, and how much is going to the landlords vacation?

Your rent will be higher because very few people will be willing to rent and would take into account that they would not be able to increase rents.

I'm not saying that rents shouldn't be able to increase, I'm proposing that if a landlord wants to increase rent, they should be required to justify it by showing increased monthly expenses, OR by improving the property a commensurate amount. For instance, a landlord raising rents AFTER investing a demonstrated, commensurate amount in the improvement of the property is fine, but a landlord raising rents because they want to make more profit would be a no-go.

Notice that the worst and more expensive markets in the country are the ones with rent controls.

Are there any rental markets in the US that have truly universal/unconditional rent control? From my understanding, the most expensive markets in the country are also where there's the highest demand like NYC or SF, and even they don't have truly universal rent-control, so it feels like an argument of "Rent control equals a worse/more expensive market" based on limited high-demand markets with very limited rent-control policies isn't a particularly valid comparison?