That’s true of law enforcement and the military everywhere, unless they’re specifically rooting out fascist types internally on an ongoing basis.
What lousy reporting. This little dangling bit at the end is just as important as the rest but no details? That’s kind of important to know.
I was specifically looking for this as my pro/con opinion hinges on what happens between tenants. I’m not going to scream bloody murder because 7+COLA is not a situation I would find myself bumping up against, UNLESS it transfers between tenants. In which case fuck that bullshit. Landlords know: good tenants are worth their weight in gold, so we tend not to raise rent and we’ve gone 3 years without an increase in a place where annual increases are ~6-9% annually. But I do think we should be able to reset it between tenants, as the market can change quite a bit in a few years and people shouldn’t be punished for doing the right thing. I don’t understand the mentality that it’s ok to raise rent so often, I could see once every five years or more but I think when people agree on a price for something it’s not nice to turn around and a year or two later say sorry actually I’m changing the price. Seems dishonest and greedy to me.
Sure, no one minds staking their life savings and their future in an illiquid situation and then surprise! You’re not popular so we’ve all voted to reduce the value of that, sorry better luck next time.
We’re fucked between a rock and a hard place. Housing in some places is too high, but prices shouldn’t be deliberately tanked. The options proposed so far range from fucking over homeowners to fucking over renters. Subsidies seem attractive in the short run because they fix a problem NOW but all they do is pump money into the already inflated prices. Recently Kamala Harris proposed some housing program and it just transparently on its face would have seriously exacerbated the problem, but it was shoving money around and was “doing something”.
Rent control is the “we have to do something”-ism of housing policy. There’s hardly a serious economist who won’t admit it doesn’t fix the problem and likely makes it worse. And yet people continually keep flocking to it. :headdesk:
These two statements contradict each other.
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Did you read the details of the bill? It excludes new construction for 15 years.
Again, maybe read the details first. This bill only applies to developments of over 9 units. Rentals of single-family homes are unaffected.
Yes, I’m sure that’s why the rental industry groups fought this so hard. They hate money!
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To clarify the devaluing is in the property price not the rent. So no contradiction.
It’s still logically inconsistent. Rent controlled (older) buildings command higher rents, and are thus worth less? New construction is more valuable, and thus, they must charge lower rent?
Oh, and this:
Is the mantra of landlords, developers, and real-estate agents. But of course they are neutral parties, so they can evaluate it objectively. Sure.
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If you can’t afford to buy, then rent. If you buy, you’re taking a risk, so Caveat Emptor. Furthermore, housing as an investment needs to be clamped down on, as it only drives up prices.
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I lived in SF from 1998 to 2013 and that was never true in that period.
I did have friends who moved to Daly City, were there was no rent control, because they could get a cheaper apartment (ignoring the cost of commuting in and having to drive everywhere).
The next year their landlord very nearly doubled their rent.
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Yes rent control raises rents and lowers property values at the same time. Starting rent that is. Over time of course rent goes down for those who work the system well enough (and some needy folks). Over time the rent controlled units take in less rent but that is little consolation to anyone moving into the area who subsidizes those who have come before.
So let me get this straight:
It’s good then bad for some.
It’s bad then good for others.
It’s always bad for everyone.
Rent goes down for landlords, so they suffer.
Rent goes up for tenants, so they suffer.
It’s so good for landlords that they spend millions of dollars to fight it. On behalf of their tenants, who will see their rent raised and lowered, at the same time.
I went to see a high school production of A Midsummer’s Night Dream this evening, and I have to say, Nick Bottom’s rantings made more sense.
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Yes most of that is true. Rent control is good for some landlords and bad for others. Good for some tenants and bad for others. Overall bad. Rent control distorts the market.
I’m open to alternatives, except for:
- the status quo. Everyone knows it’s not working, even The people who benefit most
- unregulated development, which leads to sprawl, and sprawl is bad
Reading up on rent control, the primary problem seems to be loopholes, not the fundamental concept. Just because greedy people keep finding ways to semi-legally get around the intent of the law doesn’t mean the law is bad. The problem is with the greedy people. The extreme at that end of the regulatory spectrum is to simply, unavoidably make draconian rules about renting, where there is no wiggle room and extreme penalties for even a whiff of violation. I don’t think that’s what landlords/developers/real estate groups want, but that’s what they’ll get if they don’t get on board.
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Agreed that our current system is broken big time. Props for reading up. Agreed that the primary problem with rent control is “loopholes”. In order to get it passed, the developers and other moneyed interests always end up extracting their chunk of our flesh.
The main reason for unaffordable housing is that the fed/guv have pursued policies like low (and tax-subsidized) interest loans which drive the cost of housing up. Every time housing values go up, everyone in power cheers while those who need affordable housing die a little.
Honestly I don’t think that will ever change; other than anti-corruption efforts like Lessig has pursued, or widespread violent revolution.
So we are, certainly for now, stuck with housing that is simply more expensive than the lower middle class can afford, and the only way to make it affordable is for someone to subsidize housing for people who can’t afford it.
Hypothetically there could be perfect rent control system which has closed all loopholes, free of fraud, persists as tenants are replaced, and exists everywhere in the world. I could see that helping make housing affordable.
The problem with any rent control that resets to market values upon tenant replacement is that it creates an incentive for evictions and even leaving property empty. Because one person (landlord) is directly subsidizing one tenant, those two end up in conflict caused by rent control. This is one reason that I rented a non-rent controlled unit while I was in San Francisco. I ended up creating a great relationship with my landlord, helping to maintain the unit and such. They only raised my rent by 20% over the 10 years I was there, about the same as if I had been in rent controlled housing (for an extra ~20% frontloaded premium that I escaped). By the time I left, the market rate for my unit was almost double what I was paying. My landlord and my interests were aligned. That was very different from the relationship most long term rental-controlled tenants have with their landlord, who is constantly finding ways to get them out.
The closest I can come to a solution is to diffuse the responsibility for subsidizing housing from one individual to a state. Have everyone who lives in that state contribute according to means, and use the funds to subsidize those who, according to means, cannot afford housing. The state takes the place of a subset of landlords as the ones who do the subsidizing of housing costs. Another advantage of this approach is that if the government has to pay out these subsidies, it might become clear that they could save money by not pursuing policies that drive up housing costs and income inequality.
It’s obviously not something that is going to be supported by people who are anti-socialist, but it has the advantage that by spreading the load among everyone, no single interest group has as large of an incentive to kill it with lobbying (except the ultra-rich, doh).
Really, most every problem with our economy comes down to corruption. Rent control is rife with corruption. My take is that convincing greedy people not to be greedy will never happen. Nobody wants to get a worse deal than the other guy, and some people’s lives are predicated on getting a much better deal than the other guy.
The best we can do is tie the hands of corrupt people and limit their damage. “Socialism” done poorly will unfortunately just increase opportunities for corruption. Socialism done well, somehow that hasn’t yet been seen, is our only salvation. My take is that socialism works best when it’s as universal and unavoidable as possible. Rent control as it exists today is the opposite, concentrating all the socialism into one relationship between one renter and one landlord. That concentration makes it much easier for corrupt people to get around it.
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I think it will be interesting to watch how it goes in Oregon. This new law isn’t just about rent control, and it comes in combination with a massive public investment in affordable housing for the most troubled area in the state - Portland. They seem to have the eviction front covered - you can’t evict someone trivially, and you can’t make their lives miserable to get them to leave on their own. So the conflict at that point isn’t even tenant-landlord, it’s landlord-state for the ones who want to abuse the system. Blend in a bolus of affordable housing investment, and they might have a good recipe for getting it to work. The situation is very different there than in SF or NYC.
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The Portland rent control is the best I have seen. Allowing 7% per year increases will keep the rents from drifting too far from the market, which reduces incentive for end-runs.
Tenants rights laws (including rent control and eviction control) work best to give people a bit of extra time to react to the problem of living in a market they can no longer afford. San Francisco requires 60 day notice on a month-to-month after a year, and theoretically prevents landlords from breaking term leases and rent controlled tenancies without cause. In practice not so much; my landlord who I had a great relationship with wasn’t aware of the 60 day right and out of ignorance tried to give me a 30 day notice when I was being cagey about my moveout date. If they violated the laws you can be sure corrupt landlords are doing so too.
The goal should be to give some predictability to the housing situation, allowing people more time to get things squared away to move to a cheaper area, downsize, or whatever they need to adjust to get back to affordability.
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