Sadly this isn't going to help. Have lived in Portland for the last 25 years, Portland was for a time, was the unpopular rainy big town. Now, Portland is known for all sort of things. I see tour buses downtown and big money has moved in. The rich are buying and building, the middle class is moving out and the poor are getting subsidized houses and rent.
Oregon passed sweeping housing crisis laws
131–140 of 278 posts
Re: Oregon passed sweeping housing crisis laws
#132Earlier 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.
Maintenance can be passed through to renters in California. The landlord just needs to ensure the maintenance is actually legitimate (i.e. they can't put in a gold toilet and charge for it), otherwise the rent board could rule the costs can't be passed through.
Re: Oregon passed sweeping housing crisis laws
#133It’s crazy how many people advocate for rent caps when all it will do is make the housing shortage worse. And making it harder to evict tenants will also make it worse. If you want housing, sign a year lease and dont be a horrible tenant. landlords have to deal with some of the worst people out there. People who destroy their property and who disrupt the lives of other tenants. And it’s only these horrible tenants that use all these ridiculous tenant protection laws as a way to torment the landlord.
And this article makes it seem like California hasn’t done anything which is complete bullshit. They fail to mention the massive ADU initiative that effectively doubled the amount of housing in residential areas. Making things better for the developer and the landlord which will be a thousand times more effective than anything else. Even commercial developments use these ADUs.
Re: Oregon passed sweeping housing crisis laws
#134Eastern European countries have a racial homogeneity that the United States doesn't have.
Is there any evidence that this has ever explained anything, or is it just racism? Seems like it's the go-to argument of some people to explain away just about any situation where some other country has something desirable and the US doesn't. "We can't have nice things because black people"?
No it’s not because of Black people - it’s because when you don’t have racial homogeneity, people are worried about “them” taking advantage of the system.
It’s a lot easier to be generous to people who “could be their child/relative”. You see the same thing in the justice system.
Re: Oregon passed sweeping housing crisis laws
#135> 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…
It’s not clear what the rent control will do in conjunction with the zoning changes. I’m hopeful.
Re: Oregon passed sweeping housing crisis laws
#136Earlier 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…
>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.
Landlords estimate a vacancy rate and keep that amount in reserves. However, they all earn more money if it's not vacant. It's almost never the case that they can make more money by keeping the rent high and units vacant.
Also, is they are using a property management company (which surprisingly many do), then turnovers are likely more expensive for the landlord than the tenant's cost to move - they usually charge 50% of one month's rent to find a new tenant for you.
If they're too optimistic in that vacancy rate, they will lose money.
For anyone thinking landlords have all the power, hang out on real estate forums. After all expenses (including vacancy), most RE investors target $100-200/month per unit. Now often, over several years, if rents shoot up in the city, they'll make good money from the increased rent. But they don't rely on that - their usual hope is the property's value will go up so they can sell it one day. The landlords who make huge piles of money are outliers. The vast majority of landlords do not make anything close to a SV SW developer and are not aiming to (of course, though, whatever they do make is almost "free", which makes the difference to them).
The top skill for a landlord is to estimate costs. At $100-200/unit, if they underestimate a lot, they are out of business. Surprisingly, most do not carry vandalism insurance. So if a disgruntled tenant trashes a place, they could easily lose the property. If they do not reserve money for evictions, they could easily lose the property.
Re: Oregon passed sweeping housing crisis laws
#137Earlier quoted context omitted.
Of course they're more vehicle-vehicle in the US; hardly anyone walks in America. Just look at the stats. Even the walk-iest big city in the US, NYC, only has like 6% walk mode share. However, controlled for number of trips/distance, being a pedestrian in the US is generally quite dangerous compared to elsewhere.
I see 28% walk share for NYC (pdf warning): http://www.nyc.gov/html/dot/downloads/pdf/nycdot-citywide-mo...
Re: Oregon passed sweeping housing crisis laws
#138Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
One way to look at this is, land owners are generally wealthier than renters. According to the Federal Reserve Survey of Consumer Finances landowners are 44 times wealthier. It makes sense that the government protects people who are less able to deal with financial instability.
Re: Oregon passed sweeping housing crisis laws
#139Earlier 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…
This would encourage tearing down old rental units in order to build new rental units in their place.
In California there are tough demolition protections in the highest demand cities. Proposed state-wide legislation (SB 50) designed to spur homebuilding will actually make it illegal to demolish any home where a no-fault eviction has occurred. So at least in California I'm not too concerned about this particular side-effect.
Re: Oregon passed sweeping housing crisis laws
#140Earlier quoted context omitted.
Germany has MUCH more kids walking around by themselves than the US, even with higher population densities and a complete lack of mandatory single family home zoning. The US actually sucks big time for child independence. If anything, these sort of car dominant neighborhoods make it more dangerous for kids to go around by themselves. Cars go much faster there. > There are lots of poor neighborhoods that are single fa…
> This entirely misses the point. The point isn't that every SFH-only neighborhood is affluent or even middle-class, it's that having all these SFH-only neighborhoods supports stratification. Is that the point? Is stratification what we are trying to prevent by removing single family home regulations? I don't think it will work.
Prevent? No. Alleviate? Yes.
You can't just say "I don't think it will work" without saying why. Allowing for smaller home forms would mean affordable options in desirable neighborhoods. Do you have a reason to believe poorer families would still universally avoid those options?