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

Post by ximeng » Tue, Jan 09, 2018, 8:24 AM UTC

nerfhammer wrote: post #153

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…

The term for this is called "labor mobility". Instead of increasing commute times, more typically it involves simply not taking jobs that are further away. Restricting labor mobility is really bad for obvious reasons: people not being able to move where the jobs are means jobs not being filled even as unemployment increases. There is overwhelming evidence that labor mobility has gotten drastically worse in recent dec…

Post by gozur88 » Tue, Jan 09, 2018, 8:32 AM UTC

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…

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Jan 09, 2018, 8:50 AM UTC

xster wrote: post #169

nerfhammer wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The term for this is called "labor mobility". Instead of increasing commute times, more typically it involves simply not taking jobs that are further away. Restricting labor mobility is really bad for obvious reasons: people not being able to move where the jobs are means jobs not being filled even as unemployment increases. There is overwhelming evidence that labor mobility has gotten drastically worse in recent dec…

Couple the labour immobility with capital extreme mobility and you get the capitalist's wet dream: lower labour costs.

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Jan 09, 2018, 9:00 AM UTC

muzz wrote: post #257

spike021 wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Post by Decade » Tue, Jan 09, 2018, 9:06 AM UTC

refurb wrote: post #242

matt4077 wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's nothing to dispute here–the are obviously factors other than costs that make (some) people prefer to stay put: local family, friends, or even plain old laziness. That doesn't exclude the cost scenario outline further up, and the relative strength of these effects vary from person to person. And no argument will "win" such debates for either side. These are complex issues, and even if everyone can agree on the…

that dabbled in an ideology-driven "free market" approach. The result are the suburban hell-holes that are Atlanta, or parts of Houston: Low-density clone cities totally reliant on cars, with much longer commutes and huge environmental footprints, almost devoid of street life. I assume because that's what people want? HNers seem to think a downtown core existence is the best and apparently aren't aware there is a big…