Oregon passed sweeping housing crisis laws • Hacker News Board

Re: Oregon passed sweeping housing crisis laws

#111

Post by briandear » Sat, Jul 20, 2019, 3:30 PM UTC

throw0101a wrote: post #8

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. 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…

Out of curiosity, have you ever owned a building? I might suggest that your opinions might change once you have. Owning rental property isn’t a tidy math problem.

Newer buildings have more predictable costs, definitely not older buildings. It’s pretty much the opposite of what you said in the real world. Newer buildings can lease to higher quality tenants at higher rates with lower eviction/non-payment/damage risk. Older buildings can run the gamut. You can have an older building filled with stable senior citizens that runs perfectly for decades or you can have an older building filled with tenants who constantly break things, are late on rent, run meth labs, or simply trash a place and vacate in the middle of the night. You might have to evict someone and the process could take a year. Air conditioners fail randomly and expensively. Roof leaks develop and tenants might not even report it for months (yes, that sort of thing happens all the time. As a building gets older, the risks increase, but the rent you can charge decreases compared to a new building.

My suggestion is to actually ask people who have owned building exactly why they oppose rent control so fiercely and the answers aren’t going to be about greed but about increased financial risk.

Re: Oregon passed sweeping housing crisis laws

#112

Post by bko » Sat, Jul 20, 2019, 3:31 PM UTC

pmoriarty wrote: post #65

bko wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 th…

"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" If a month of foregone rent was such a huge burden to landlords then it wouldn't be so common for them to keep their properties vacant. Just recently, Los Angeles lawmakers have proposed a vacancy tax on the 111,000 vacant homes in the area.[1] [1] - https://www.latimes.com/local/la…

I think vacancy rates in some metropolitan areas increased primarily due to rent control, rent stabilization, tenant rights or the risk of future legislation.

If you can't raise rents, you'd be less likely to react to lower market rents. So prices stay sticky on the way down. Even if the laws are not in place now, there is a risk of them being in place in the near future and you'll be stuck at below market rents.

Also if you can't remove tenants then you'd be more selective and naturally that would increase vacancy rates.

A high vacancy rate doesn't prove that its not expensive to fill a rental. In fact higher vacancy rates means losing a tenant is even greater than if there were low vacancy rates. That means that an empty apartment is going to stay on the market even longer. And most landlords have some debt arrangement, are paying interest, taxes and insurance in addition to forgoing rental income.

Re: Oregon passed sweeping housing crisis laws

#113

Post by justapassenger » Sat, Jul 20, 2019, 3:31 PM UTC

lukejduncan wrote: post #105

bassman9000 wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That means a landlord can extract money well above a true market rate. The market rate IS what the landlord extracts from it, which is what the market, you, is willing to pay.

Why is this being downvoted?

Because a lot of people lack basic financial education

Re: Oregon passed sweeping housing crisis laws

#114

Post by Redoubts » Sat, Jul 20, 2019, 3:31 PM UTC

Misdicorl wrote: post #42

thrav wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the problem is imagined. The “problem” of safety has made its way out to the burbs now too. The public world is mostly safe, and kids are mostly capable of navigating it on their own and in small groups — the adults in America have chosen not to believe that, and written laws forbidding parents from allowing their children to even attempt it. These choices may have resulted in a few less kidnappings, but they…

Stranger danger isn't the only risk to children. Being hit by fast moving vehicle traffic is much higher on most people's worry list.

Well I feel much more worried about being a pedestrian in the suburbs than in a city. Drivers seem to forget people and bikes exist unless they’re constantly reminded of their presence.

Re: Oregon passed sweeping housing crisis laws

#115

Post by briandear » Sat, Jul 20, 2019, 3:33 PM UTC

spoonie wrote: post #64

yardie wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can imagine this can have a domino effect. Older buildings require more maintenance. A landlord who plans poorly may find themselves squeezed at the bottom from deferred maintenance and from the top due to rent restrictions.

Those landlords should go out of business in a free market. Not properly accounting for maintenance costs is a business failure, not the tenant’s fault. If property prices are higher than rents that’s a market failure, not a cost to be passed onto tenants.

So a landlord should be subject to the free market, but tenants shouldn’t be? Tenants should be protected from rent increases, but property owners shouldn’t be protected against cost increases? That isn’t the free market.

Re: Oregon passed sweeping housing crisis laws

#116

Post by kspaans » Sat, Jul 20, 2019, 3:36 PM UTC

LaserToy wrote: post #98

So, I probably drastically misunderstanding how rent control works, but I don’t see how it is going to help. I would argue it will push house prices even higher as you will have less people trying to rent places. Why? I was reading a bit about renting as a business (plus I have 1 house in Bay Area I rent) and there is so-called rule of 1%, which means for cash flow to be positive you should rent your house for at lea…

That may be because you're competing against other owners who bought their houses for peanuts (relatively speaking) and thanks to Prop 13 also pay peanuts in property tax. They can depress market rents (below purchase prices) because for them rents are mostly profit. Even people who bought 5 or 10 years ago at previous prices can rent for less than you but keep the same margins.

Re: Oregon passed sweeping housing crisis laws

#117

Post by toasterlovin » Sat, Jul 20, 2019, 3:37 PM UTC

scribu wrote: post #13

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 [leaving children unattended] becomes unsafe in places with high density populations. Is that factually accurate, or just a false impression that people get? Let's assume it is objectively more unsafe. Is the problem the high density or is it some other aspect that causes issues? Most kids in East European countries, the vast majority of which grow up in high density neighborhoods, are left unat…

From what I can tell, most of the people arguing that cities are safe for kids also seem to think that letting street people do whatever they want in the urban core is okay. You can cite all the stats about stranger danger that you want, but no sane parent is going to let their kids play outside in American urban cores as they currently exist. Urban cores are not human friendly places. Adults put up with it so they can live in a more stimulating environment. They are not suitable for children to wander in the same way that my kids can wander in our neighborhood in the suburbs.

Re: Oregon passed sweeping housing crisis laws

#118

Post by isoskeles » Sat, Jul 20, 2019, 3:38 PM UTC

huffmsa wrote: post #25

isoskeles wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with the first sentence. And the last one too. However, San Francisco in particular has worse spatial constraints than NYC. That city has “run out of land.”

I did weight that. Most of SF is landfill and falling apart. But there's expansion outside of the city still relatively available. So I guess my addendum and corelary is that once you do hit that "last possible moment" the action needs to be decisive and absolute. NYC did a pretty good job of it.

Which parts are falling apart, or what do you define as falling apart? I used to live in SF, and I still work there. It looks mostly put-together to me. There is definitely blight and abandoned builds, especially around Civic Center, but that plus landfill is not "most" of SF.

Map of landfill (green): https://qph.fs.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-d7f66b45593b76f812792e...

My comment is mostly targeted at the idea that there aren't spatial constraints. SF proper is thoroughly developed. The land is accounted for. We can nitpick over specific plots, but there isn't new land to start developing. People who move here want to live in SF or close enough to public transit, and most of those places are developed too, even if they are suburban. There is no BART in Tracy, etc. so people aren't moving to the undeveloped land there.

Re: Oregon passed sweeping housing crisis laws

#119

Post by mrep » Sat, Jul 20, 2019, 3:38 PM UTC

scribu wrote: post #13

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 [leaving children unattended] becomes unsafe in places with high density populations. Is that factually accurate, or just a false impression that people get? Let's assume it is objectively more unsafe. Is the problem the high density or is it some other aspect that causes issues? Most kids in East European countries, the vast majority of which grow up in high density neighborhoods, are left unat…

>> We've observed that [leaving children unattended] becomes unsafe in places with high density populations.

> Is that factually accurate, or just a false impression that people get?

I don't feel safe as an adult living in downtown seattle due to the homeless population (this person's experience 100% matches mine [0]) and homeless people are going to naturally gravitate towards high density areas where there are more people to panhandle from.

Also, it's much riskier to commit a crime in a low density population where you can be recognized much more easily.

[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20422473

Re: Oregon passed sweeping housing crisis laws

#120

Post by mdorazio » Sat, Jul 20, 2019, 3:41 PM UTC

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 would love to see that data as well, but can’t find any reliable numbers that control for newness/niceness of the apartments. Anecdotally, I pay about $1000 a month less than market rate on the west side of LA due to rent control, which realistically is a big reason I haven’t already left LA entirely. It would take an offer in the $50k range to buy me out. Landlord offers tend to be lower than that [1].

[1] https://www.google.com/amp/s/la.curbed.com/platform/amp/2018...