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Stanford paper says rent control is driving up cost of housing in San Francisco

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Re: Stanford paper says rent control is driving up cost of housing in San Francisco

#81

Post by boomboomsubban »

refurb wrote: post #32

This is what new rent control regulations in Toronto are doing... More than 1,000 planned purpose-built rental units have instead been converted to condominiums in the Greater Toronto Area since Premier Kathleen Wynne's government expanded rent control [1] It's making the housing crisis worse, not better. For those who already have low rent locked in, it's the ultimate "f k you, I got mine." [1] https://www.theglobea…

>This is what new rent control regulations in Toronto are doing...

*according to the landlord lobbying group based on unknown data that even the report says they cannot guarantee the accuracy of.

Re: Stanford paper says rent control is driving up cost of housing in San Francisco

#82

Post by stickfigure »

s73ver_ wrote: post #48
mattlong wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Rent Control surely just prevents local families from being muscled out by the tech employees? Correct. And in the process of doing so, further contributes to the lack of inventory of market-rate rental units available to the influx of newcomers/tech employees. As mentioned elsewhere in the comments here, this causes huge disparities for rents of similar units within a given building as landlords attempt to compens…

So what's the solution for addressing this problem, AND not having local families from being muscled out by tech employees? Because whatever is proposed, if it means that local families have to leave because the rent was increased astronomically underneath them, then it's a non-starter.

The solution is for local families to be muscled out.

Hi, let me introduce myself. I am SF's housing crisis. So are many of my friends. We're those "local families" who have been living in SF for 15+ years in rent-controlled apartments. We're still here because the rent is cheap. If our rent went up even moderately, we'd probably move to the suburbs; by the time you hit your 40s, you get tired of stepping over panhandlers and human feces.

If you really want to get angry, let me tell you about the multiple times I've moved away for extended periods and kept the apartment unoccupied as a pied-a-terre. Rent control makes it affordable!

There are a lot of us, enough to occupy a significant chunk of the housing stock. Because we've taken this stock off the market, the available float is smaller than it would otherwise be, so everyone's bidding up what's left.

Would average rents go up without rent control? Certainly. But it would force a lot of us "local families" to make long-overdue decisions, freeing up housing, and driving down the average "new rent".

Re: Stanford paper says rent control is driving up cost of housing in San Francisco

#83

Post by dragonwriter »

tomohawk wrote: post #33
dmix wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sometimes the cost of intervention outweigh benefits, sometimes they don't. + Sometimes it works for a short period, as the policy reflected the economy at the time of creation, then becomes irrelevant via technology/market reaction to policy/general progress... but yet stays a policy for decades. The important point is that we rarely ever measures whether it does work or not, and policy tends to have an extremely…

Heinlen in "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" introduces the idea of a legislature with 2 chambers. One for creating laws and the other for getting rid of them. The threshold for creating them being higher. The way it is now, everything is geared towards "doing" things, and credit is received for "accomplishments". Its usually much harder to undo things. It would be refreshing to have specialists in undoing things.

> The way it is now, everything is geared towards "doing" things, and credit is received for "accomplishments"

Repealing a law is doing something, and people frequently point to it as an accomplishment (or goal, if not yet done) if they think the law is unpopular with their constituency.

Re: Stanford paper says rent control is driving up cost of housing in San Francisco

#84

Post by Spooky23 »

mattlong wrote: post #24
45h34jh53k4j wrote: post #4

Now, I have not read the paper, but I would have thought the free market combined with sky-high wages and demand, combined with a lack of inventory, was the cause. Rent Control surely just prevents local families from being muscled out by the tech employees?

> Rent Control surely just prevents local families from being muscled out by the tech employees? Correct. And in the process of doing so, further contributes to the lack of inventory of market-rate rental units available to the influx of newcomers/tech employees. As mentioned elsewhere in the comments here, this causes huge disparities for rents of similar units within a given building as landlords attempt to compens…

The market would speak anyway. If people are paid enough to pay $50k/year in rent, no landlord in his right mind will charge less.

Google or whatever doesn’t pay based on housing costs. They pay based on business value.

Re: Stanford paper says rent control is driving up cost of housing in San Francisco

#85

Post by lern_too_spel »

bendmorris wrote: post #13
theduro wrote: post #12

Rent control is a failed experiment. All it does is force land lords to massively increase rent amounts when someone moves out to account for multi-year market increases. Basically, if the real market price of an apartment is ~$3,000/mo, but in 5 years it realistically would be $5,000, they will simply list it for $5,000 now, to mitigate the loss. My mother-in-law is a land lord in Los Angeles (a very fair one at tha…

>My mother-in-law is a land lord in Los Angeles ... She is a staunch opponent of rent control. Is this supposed to be surprising...? Regardless of whether it works for tenants, obviously rent control isn't there for the landlord's benefit.

I know several slumlords who have made a killing off of rent control. It rewards bad actors disproportionately more than bleeding hearts like GP's mother.

Because slumlords are better able to extract profits from rent controlled properties, they are willing to buy them for more than they are worth to bleeding hearts. All rent controlled properties will be managed by slumlords in the long run.

Re: Stanford paper says rent control is driving up cost of housing in San Francisco

#86

Post by danieldisu »

tomohawk wrote: post #35

Price controls always end up creating artificial scarcity. The solution to lower housing costs is more housing, not less.

Maybe we need something deeper than that, you have 3/4 of your country that are almost a wasteland and you insist on cram all the people in 4 or 5 cities. Maybe we need to start to incentive moving people to other more empty places...

Re: Stanford paper says rent control is driving up cost of housing in San Francisco

#87

Post by seandougall »

8ytecoder wrote: post #39

Another point which is usually not well-discussed, the houses/apts in SF are really bad in terms of quality, amenities and features. With new housing, this is starting to change a little bit. But, overall, rent control results in really bad maintenance. Landlords do the absolute bare minimum to not get sued/fined. For the rent people in SF pay, the value they derive is almost a joke.

> Landlords do the absolute bare minimum to not get sued/fined.

IME, this is a pretty universal statement.

Hop across the bridge to cities without rent control and you'll see the same thing. The problem isn't any specific policy, it's the power balance between landlord and tenant created by a market with limited supply and ever-growing demand.

Re: Stanford paper says rent control is driving up cost of housing in San Francisco

#88

Post by olalonde »

8ytecoder wrote: post #39

Another point which is usually not well-discussed, the houses/apts in SF are really bad in terms of quality, amenities and features. With new housing, this is starting to change a little bit. But, overall, rent control results in really bad maintenance. Landlords do the absolute bare minimum to not get sued/fined. For the rent people in SF pay, the value they derive is almost a joke.

When I moved to SF, I was shocked to find out most 3000+$/month apartments didn't have their own washing machine.

Re: Stanford paper says rent control is driving up cost of housing in San Francisco

#89

Post by lern_too_spel »

pmoriarty wrote: post #42
theduro wrote: post #12

Rent control is a failed experiment. All it does is force land lords to massively increase rent amounts when someone moves out to account for multi-year market increases. Basically, if the real market price of an apartment is ~$3,000/mo, but in 5 years it realistically would be $5,000, they will simply list it for $5,000 now, to mitigate the loss. My mother-in-law is a land lord in Los Angeles (a very fair one at tha…

"Rent control is a failed experiment. All it does is force land lords to massively increase rent amounts when someone moves out to account for multi-year market increases." Forces them? As if they wouldn't raise rents as much as they felt they could get away with anyway. Or as if without rent control landlords would keep rents low, merely out of the goodness of their hearts.

It is an economic certainty. If more of the housing supply is tied up by rent controlled tenants who won't move out, supply and demand places the equilibrium price for available units far higher than it would be without rent control.

When you institute rent control, you save existing teachers some money, but when they retire, good luck finding new teachers willing to work in the new market with much higher rents.

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