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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

#251

Post by dmix »

ridgeguy wrote: post #230
tooltalk wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO, there should be automatic sunset provision in every law passed in this country, like the one existed for the Patriotic Act, and reviewed, renewed or expired every 5 or 10 years.

I hate the Patriot Act too, but beware unintended consequences. How do you feel about laws like the Civil Rights Act of 1964? I think that law continues to serve our society well. And I'm certain it would not be renewed by our current Federal government. Ditto for regulations on water, sewage, pharma purity and many other laws that facilitate civilization. It's all very nice to say 'sunset every law', but we depend o…

> How do you feel about laws like the Civil Rights Act of 1964? I think that law continues to serve our society well.

Maybe certain parts of it - yes. But I've read many articles talking about how housing segregation is far worse than it was even before the civil rights act.

The act explicitly cites this problem yet completely failed to address it.

Some acts can have obvious no-debate reenactment. But this deters broad sweeping legislation from being passed, if subsets are not well thought out or are pigeonholed in. Why not pin sections onto acts so you can easily repeat ones with strong data/political support, while ending other less effective parts?

That said, there should no doubt be a dichotomy between human rights and constitutional limitations (which are pre-emptive limitations on legislation) and the general type of policies passed by congress.

My primary focus is on economy law as well. Social law might be more socially evolutionary.

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

#252

Post by dmix »

nradov wrote: post #231
oldsklgdfth wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally I think that 1) is not attainable in a practical sense. It would require resources that are not available and would just add to the ridiculous overhead of running a government. I used to believe in an ideal state as the one you describe. More recently, I think about what a system - i.e economic, political, social - that is stable (in some sense) looks like. For example, liberatarians believe that markets s…

Small societies also mean small markets. That's one of the reasons why so few of the largest and most successful companies were founded in small countries; you need a certain critical mass to allow for growth and economies of scale.

Which is often the positive effects of restrictions on bureaucracy, such as timeframes and review agencies, creating limits on the size of government directly and indirectly.

The current costs of never-ending legislation and regulation is incredibly underrated IMO:

https://imgur.com/a/zagcH (please excuse the non-log axis, but the point remains)

Pretty much the only limit on the scope and extent of legislation is the constitution, which affect a limited scope of the interests of society. We must as a society demand that the legislation being enacted is demonstrably effective and useful, beyond the era it was enacted.

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

#253

Post by cryptonector »

Well, duh. Rent control causes housing shortages because who wants to be a rent controlled landlord? Well then, housing shortages are reflected in higher housing costs for anyone who can't benefit from having [had for a long time] a rent-controlled apartment.

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

#254

Post by cryptonector »

ghouse wrote: post #5

Rent control solves some problems. Creates other problems. Similar to almost any intervention in free markets. Sometimes the cost of intervention outweigh benefits, sometimes they don't. Rent control allows people (wealthy or poor) to remain where they are without purchasing their residence. Unfortunately, to do accomplish this objective, it increases the price for new arrivals (be they wealthy or poor). In Californi…

Rent control solves no problems. It only causes problems.

EDIT: But I like the observation that prop 13 is to ownership as rent control is to rent.

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

#255

Post by muzz »

ThrustVectoring wrote: post #43

Another second-order effect of rent control is increased traffic. Suppose you have two residents with significantly below-market-rate housing at the same quality level, one in downtown SF and another in Mountain View. The former starts a new job at Google in Mountain View, the latter starts a new job at a trendy start-up in downtown SF. Since they're paying significantly below market rate, they're unable to trade apa…

Mountain View only adopted rent control very recently, and only for apartments that existed before 1995.

Not sure if anyone pointed this out, but this problem of labor mobility exists for all of those who own their home as well.

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

#256

Post by dang »

classwarsteve wrote: post #237
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My point is that Jules is wrong that capitalists will permit you to set up a communist society. The non-communist countries tried to sabotage the communist ones, true. (And vice versa - a cold war is like that.) That is not at all the same as saying that, within a capitalist countries, the capitalists will not permit you to set up a commune. Your argument (and link) therefore do not actually address jules' point at…

1. Then perhaps you'd be happier if I were to point you in the direction of The Black Panthers or MOVE or any of the leftist victims of the COINTELPRO operations. 2 & 3. What I'm trying to help you understand is that a commune within a capitalist state that doesn't challenge the structures of capitalist society is not a communist project. Please calm down, it's clear you're getting upset. I'm trying to help you under…

As the site guidelines make clear, you can't use HN primarily for ideological battle, regardless of ideology. Since that's clearly all you've been doing with this account, we've banned it. Please don't create accounts to break the site guidelines with.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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

#257

Post by muzz »

spike021 wrote: post #140
ThrustVectoring wrote: post #43

Another second-order effect of rent control is increased traffic. Suppose you have two residents with significantly below-market-rate housing at the same quality level, one in downtown SF and another in Mountain View. The former starts a new job at Google in Mountain View, the latter starts a new job at a trendy start-up in downtown SF. Since they're paying significantly below market rate, they're unable to trade apa…

I believe this is exactly my current dilemma: I live in San Jose, I commute to SF 3 days a week (super thankful for the chance to work remote 2x a week). My current apartment (a 1BR I live in by myself) costs a bit less than 1k a month and is rent-controlled. The equivalent in SJ is probably worth 2-2.5x as much per month, and in SF (or somewhere in-between) it can be worth anywhere from 2.5-4x as much. I've been hun…

How exactly do you get a rent controlled steal in San Jose? Those 8% annual increases add up (multiply up) very quickly.

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

#258

Post by dang »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #209
classwarsteve wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My point is that Jules is wrong that capitalists will permit you to set up a communist society. Perhaps you should revisit the cold war. In addition, a commune within a capitalist society would still be reliant on the labor of an external, exploited proletarian class. Communism is internationalist. Ultimately this is the failure of first world social democratic programs that provide decent gains for their working cla…

> My point is that Jules is wrong that capitalists will permit you to set up a communist society. The non-communist countries tried to sabotage the communist ones, true. (And vice versa - a cold war is like that.) That is not at all the same as saying that, within a capitalist countries, the capitalists will not permit you to set up a commune. Your argument (and link) therefore do not actually address jules' point at…

Would you please refrain from doing ideological flamewar on HN? Surely you're aware it's the exact opposite of what we're trying to have here? I realize other people were doing just that, but that's all the more reason not to feed it.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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

#259

Post by asah »

notadoc wrote: post #224

San Francisco needs to build high rise apartments and condos with tons of units, and lots of them. That's all there is to it. Obsessing about rent control, population numbers, tech workers, or whatever else is nothing but a distraction. Dramatically increase supply and prices will drop.

Don't forget about transit.

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

#260

Post by taneq »

joejerryronnie wrote: post #195
DougN7 wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a really great insight. The fact that such good intentions often lead to bigger problems is what concerns me about UBI - it will surely have huge second-order effects. I'm not sure what they will be, but rent control in a city is tiny compared to the effect a universal change like UBI would introduce.

One second-order effect of true UBI would be to inflate the cost of goods to the level of UBI, thus rendering UBI pointless.

The price of basic necessities is limited by the cost of production, not some fundamental scarcity. We could produce as much food, clothing etc. as anyone could want without increasing the cost. (In fact, the cost should decrease slightly due to economies of scale.)
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