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Oregon passed sweeping housing crisis laws

latimes.com

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Re: Oregon passed sweeping housing crisis laws

#51

Post by Dumblydorr »

pchristensen wrote: post #45

Here’s an anti rent control argument I haven’t heard (this applies to stricter rent control regimes like NYC, SF - not sure about this new OR law). Getting a spot in a rent-controlled apartment is a valuable, non-transferable asset. If you buy a house and it gains $100,000 in equity, you can sell it and buy a bigger house, sell it and cash out while getting a smaller house, borrow against it. With a rent-control asse…

Great idea, I second that! Could there be a special marketplace for rent controlled places? Could allow people to swap with each other and/or use public servant status as a credit, to help teachers, firefighters, etc get living in very pricy districts.

Re: Oregon passed sweeping housing crisis laws

#52

Post by bko »

wpietri wrote: post #31
sampo wrote: post #2

> Lawmakers passed a first-in-the-nation cap on rent increases Unfortunately, rent control will have the opposite effect of what Oregon thinks, and only make housing scarcity worse. https://www.nytimes.com/2000/06/07/opinion/reckonings-a-rent... https://www.governing.com/gov-institute/voices/col-rent-cont... > in an effort to spur new homebuilding, became the only state to eliminate single-family-only zoning in many…

> Unfortunately, rent control will have the opposite effect of what Oregon thinks, and only make housing scarcity worse. It depends on the kind of rent control. Housing has important asymmetries it's reasonable to address through legislation. One is asymmetry in scale: you have one unit; landlords have many more. This gives them stronger negotiating power. Another is cost of change. It's much more expensive for me in…

> It depends on the kind of rent control. Housing has important asymmetries it's reasonable to address through legislation. One is asymmetry in scale: you have one unit; landlords have many more.

Not necessarily true. Sure , the landlord knows more about the apartment but you know more about yourself as a tenant. Landlord takes a huge risk in terms of allowing someone rent, especially given protections afforded to that individual. Most experienced landlord will cite tenant selection as very important and a huge risk. One tenant that refuses to pay rent or damages property can wipe out the return of 9 other units.

> This gives them stronger negotiating power.

I have more options as to where to move. The landlord owns a very expensive illiquid property. He can't just sell it tomorrow but I could easily choose another rental.

> Another is cost of change. It's much more expensive for me in time and money to move than it is for a landlord turn over a new unit.

Its very expensive to fill a rental. A landlord usually needs at least a month to find another tenant. That's a month of foregone rent

> That means a landlord can extract money well above a true market rate.

Market rate is the rate the landlord can get. If a transaction happens at that rate, that's the market rate.

> A third is of interest. Individuals and the community have a interest in healthy social bonds, while absentee lords mainly want to extract cash.

Not sure what "absentee lords mainly want to extract cash" means. Yes, most landlords manage properties as an investment. Landlords also have an interest in the community as they own equity in that community that would appreciate if the neighborhood gets nicer. I don't see your point.

Re: Oregon passed sweeping housing crisis laws

#53

Post by bradleyjg »

pchristensen wrote: post #45

Here’s an anti rent control argument I haven’t heard (this applies to stricter rent control regimes like NYC, SF - not sure about this new OR law). Getting a spot in a rent-controlled apartment is a valuable, non-transferable asset. If you buy a house and it gains $100,000 in equity, you can sell it and buy a bigger house, sell it and cash out while getting a smaller house, borrow against it. With a rent-control asse…

> I wonder how many rent-controlled residents in SF/NYC would accept a $100k buyout that would convert the apt to market rate.

NYC has a possibility for something like this, but only in the context of condo conversion. Although there's always stories floating around about people that didn't take it and are living for $250/mo in some fancy condo building my sense is that generally an arrangement is reached.

Re: Oregon passed sweeping housing crisis laws

#54

Post by galangalalgol »

dougmwne wrote: post #11
baggy_trough wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really an appalling point of view. There is absolutely nothing wrong with single family neighborhoods; in fact, they are greatly desirable to most.

Sure, nothing wrong at all except for: -sedentary car-dependent lifestyle -inefficent use of arable land -carbon intense lifestyle contributing to the collapse of ecosystems -materialistic lifestyle enforced -impossible to serve economically with public transit making car ownership mandatory -energy inefficient buildings -encourages racial and economic segregation -anti-social lifestyle decreases face to face contact…

if you allow retail mixed with single family you get people walking to corner markets for groceries and to the pub.

water restrictions that prevent wasteful lawns, eliminate HOA rules that require them

materialism is good right?

self driving EV, also bus stops used to serve suburbia well if the cost of driving was higher it would again.

you got me on the thermal inefficiency surface area to volume trumps any R factor.

how?

sit on your front porch, have block parties. works in many single family neighborhoods. culture not zoning

you can vote for that but I don't think you will be joined by many

Re: Oregon passed sweeping housing crisis laws

#55

Post by Misdicorl »

nickserv wrote: post #35
Misdicorl wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is exclusionary by nature; economic segregation is often the intent, and in most cases the impact. This seems awfully reductionist. I think often the intent is more along the lines of- "We want to live in a place where kids can walk to their friends house without an adult escort and/or play kickball in the street. We've observed that this becomes unsafe in places with high density populations, so lets prevent hi…

It's not the density that makes urban areas unsafe, it's all the cars. A downtown pedestrian street is perfectly safe for kids to hang out and play. Neighbors, older kids and shopkeepers keep an eye out without being in helicopter mode. In the few cities I've been to that have banned vehicular traffic in downtown areas, you do see bunches of kids running around, as done for millennia.

Yes, vehicle traffic would be by far my #1 worry in high density areas.

Re: Oregon passed sweeping housing crisis laws

#56

Post by world32 »

wwdhx wrote: post #47
world32 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No they don't. Gypsies are a large ethnic minority in many eastern european countries. Also, although a religious minority instead of racial, there are a large percentage of Muslims in many of those countries too. Don't forget that the last european genocide over ethnic and religious lines happened in eastern europe too. Also don't forget their is currently an ONGOING war in the Ukraine over divisions between those w…

Saying that a country like Romania is not ethnically homogeneous is absurd. Gypsies exist but in low numbers and stay in ghettos. Muslims only exist in some countries of the south of the Balkans.

Ok fair enough, but then why is Romania such a sh*t-hole? (Sorry Romanians). Surely the racial homogeneity there should mean that things are better over there?

Re: Oregon passed sweeping housing crisis laws

#57

Post by bastawhiz »

Misdicorl wrote: post #5
TulliusCicero wrote: post #3

Good. Mandatory single family home zoning should not exist, anywhere. It is exclusionary by nature; economic segregation is often the intent, and in most cases the impact. It's one thing to accept the free market causing this sort of segregation as the collective result of individual choices, quite another to suggest that the government ought to be using regulatory power to help enforce the creation of invisibly gate…

> It is exclusionary by nature; economic segregation is often the intent, and in most cases the impact. This seems awfully reductionist. I think often the intent is more along the lines of- "We want to live in a place where kids can walk to their friends house without an adult escort and/or play kickball in the street. We've observed that this becomes unsafe in places with high density populations, so lets prevent hi…

> We've observed that this becomes unsafe in places with high density populations, so lets prevent high density housing to maintain that lifestyle

This is a generalization that finds its roots in "white flight", which was itself driven by racism and fear mongering and the side effects of redlining and mortgage discrimination. Suburbs as we know them today didn't exist a hundred years ago. And in fact, perpetuating this belief drives more folks with money/privilege/economic mobility away from cities, increasing economic hardship (and in turn, crime) in the areas they leave.

You invalidate your own point. The south side of Chicago is not a place many people would consider safe, and yet it has a huge amount of single family units. "this becomes unsafe in places with high density populations" really means "this becomes unsafe in places with lots of poor people" or "this becomes unsafe in places with lots of people who look different from me".

Re: Oregon passed sweeping housing crisis laws

#58

Post by boomlinde »

Mountain_Skies wrote: post #23
throw0101a wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Unfortunately, rent control will have the opposite effect of what Oregon thinks, and only make housing scarcity worse. I always found it odd that rent control always seems to be an all-or-nothing policy: either things are tamped down on, or it's a laissez faire system. Does any locality have a "hybrid" approached. Something like: * buildings 0-5 years old, allow up to 3x inflation rent increases * buildings 5-10 ye…

Older buildings have all kinds of maintenance issues. Even if predictable, they're still an added expense, especially for major systems. Without allowing rental unit owners to pass those costs along to the renters, either the units will be taken off the rental market or they will be allowed to disintegrate over time until they're no longer habitable.

Combine it with laws that protect a decent standard for apartments and make it much harder to kick tenants out without a good reason.

I.e. enforce basic tenants' protection instead of worrying about what incentives landlords have. It shouldn't matter whether the landlord wants to take a unit off the market if the tenants aren't willing or can't move. Then it lies on the landlord to create an incentive for tenants to move out, for example by extracting less rent from uncontrolled units to make them more affordable.

Another good idea is for tenants to unionize and share the legal costs of e.g. questioning the legitimacy of a lease termination or challenging sub-standard living conditions.

Re: Oregon passed sweeping housing crisis laws

#59

Post by Misdicorl »

bastawhiz wrote: post #57
Misdicorl wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is exclusionary by nature; economic segregation is often the intent, and in most cases the impact. This seems awfully reductionist. I think often the intent is more along the lines of- "We want to live in a place where kids can walk to their friends house without an adult escort and/or play kickball in the street. We've observed that this becomes unsafe in places with high density populations, so lets prevent hi…

> We've observed that this becomes unsafe in places with high density populations, so lets prevent high density housing to maintain that lifestyle This is a generalization that finds its roots in "white flight", which was itself driven by racism and fear mongering and the side effects of redlining and mortgage discrimination. Suburbs as we know them today didn't exist a hundred years ago. And in fact, perpetuating th…

Can this really be tied to "white flight"? I think you make a compelling point, but white flight also happens to suburbs- which I guess is also part of your point. I don't know the reasons and history of suburb development. It seems to me that it should have a lot to do with the commoditization of fast travel costs, and its simply that rich white people were first able to take advantage.

If socioeconomic status weren't so linked to race (good lord maybe this can happen in my lifetime), would people still want single family housing neighborhoods? I think the answer is yes. They have some real advantages over living in the city or in true rural localities.

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