California Approves Statewide Rent Control • Hacker News Board

Re: California Approves Statewide Rent Control

#381

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Sep 12, 2019, 2:58 AM UTC

jacobolus wrote: post #339

dgzl wrote: post #259

I'm a renter in Oregon and I've been outspoken about this long before the laws were passed. From my experience, people who support heavy laws, regulations and taxes don't spend enough time considering potential side effects. They feel like with enough support, they can just force anything they want to happen, while completely disregarding the market. I feel like an amount of the general public just wants Big Daddy go…

YMMV, but in my experience people who use phrases like “Big Daddy government” and accuse everyone else of “pure ignorance” are typically not arguing in good faith.

[deleted]

Re: California Approves Statewide Rent Control

#382

Post by malandrew » Thu, Sep 12, 2019, 2:58 AM UTC

jdavis703 wrote: post #341

There's three paths: 1) Rent cap landlords. The landlords will cry Big Government. 2) Abolish single family-only zoning and legalize backyard cottages, townhomes and small apartments. The homeowners will cry Big Government. 3) Do nothing. Watch as more people start living in tents or endure super-commutes that snarl your traffic and worsen climate change.

Well if you explicitly pass things as “reversing a commit” instead of making a new hack to control unintended consequences, it’s harder to complain about big government since you’re making it smaller not larger.

Re: California Approves Statewide Rent Control

#383

Post by inferiorhuman » Thu, Sep 12, 2019, 2:58 AM UTC

ralusek wrote: post #357

pvelagal wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, i disagree with your opinion. Silicon Valley has been attracting a lot of people from lot of states, who all need housing. Remember , size of California is fixed. Housing in Silicon valley doesn't grow at the same rate as number of people coming here. Added to that, foreigners living in foreign countries ( who have never visited USA, who have no intention of living in USA) are able to own land/houses in silicon…

Housing in California is fixed because of zoning and construction regulations. Also, more people can't move here than can be supported...and how does putting arbitrary limits on maximum rent increase the amount of people that can live here if we're already dealing with the limitation of too many people wanting to live here? That will just increase the demand... Otherwise, there is a natural equilibrium. Many people w…

Housing in California is fixed because of zoning and construction regulations.

And who decides these zoning laws? Typically cities and counties. Unfortunately Prop 13 has incentivized building out retail properties (sales tax revenue) over all else. So let's start by doing away with Prop. 13 protections for everything but primary residences. Then, change the statewide zoning laws to encourage/require available housing before non-residential property can be built. Want 2,500 office units? Fine, but if you don't have 2,500 residences available those need to be built first. Or maybe have the state keep 75% of the property tax revenue of new developments until the housing requirements are met. That money can then be used to subsidize affordable housing.

Re: California Approves Statewide Rent Control

#384

Post by zamfi » Thu, Sep 12, 2019, 2:59 AM UTC

aswanson wrote: post #364

zamfi wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Housing in Silicon valley doesn't grow at the same rate as number of people coming here Bingo. And why not?

Existing homeowners don't want their living space turned into downtown Manhattan because there's a temporary exorbitant demand for ad click optimization and pic sharing networks.

There's a whole spectrum between single family homes and "Manhattan". It's not a binary!

The Bay Area's population has grown by 8.5% in the last 10 years. [0] Please, that's not "Manhattan". That's one person on your block converting their garage into a rentable unit.

Those "existing homeowners" are really messing things up for everyone because they don't want Bob to turn his garage into a rental? Somehow I think there's more to it than that.

[0]: https://www.kqed.org/news/11741275/map-the-bay-area-leads-ca...

Re: California Approves Statewide Rent Control

#385

Post by exfed » Thu, Sep 12, 2019, 3:00 AM UTC

jdavis703 wrote: post #341

There's three paths: 1) Rent cap landlords. The landlords will cry Big Government. 2) Abolish single family-only zoning and legalize backyard cottages, townhomes and small apartments. The homeowners will cry Big Government. 3) Do nothing. Watch as more people start living in tents or endure super-commutes that snarl your traffic and worsen climate change.

It may only apply to LA, but this whole (regulatory) issue seems deeply related to another similar article: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20806752

Re: California Approves Statewide Rent Control

#386

Post by jonfw » Thu, Sep 12, 2019, 3:01 AM UTC

jacobolus wrote: post #339

dgzl wrote: post #259

I'm a renter in Oregon and I've been outspoken about this long before the laws were passed. From my experience, people who support heavy laws, regulations and taxes don't spend enough time considering potential side effects. They feel like with enough support, they can just force anything they want to happen, while completely disregarding the market. I feel like an amount of the general public just wants Big Daddy go…

YMMV, but in my experience people who use phrases like “Big Daddy government” and accuse everyone else of “pure ignorance” are typically not arguing in good faith.

This is a fair criticism, but attacking his credibility is irrelevant. He had no credbility to start with, this is an anonymous forum and nobody knows who that guy is.

A strong counter here would include a counter-argument, and ideally even some support for that counter-argument.

Re: California Approves Statewide Rent Control

#387

Post by cabaalis » Thu, Sep 12, 2019, 3:01 AM UTC

DevKoala wrote: post #22

Rent control is abused in SF. Every engineer I know, who has been living in SF for over 5 years is currently paying an absurd amount compared to their monthly income. I even sub-leased an apartment from a friend who took off a sabbatical, and he didn’t want to lose his rent control. I don’t know who rent-control is supposed to benefit, but it seems broken. Eventually these places end up in the hands of people who kno…

> a friend who took off a sabbatical

Perhaps you don't realize how good you have it out there.

Re: California Approves Statewide Rent Control

#388

Post by dgzl » Thu, Sep 12, 2019, 3:02 AM UTC

human20190310 wrote: post #322

There is no functioning market to begin with. Housing prices and rent are through the roof in California, yet supply is not rising to meet demand, largely because existing owners oppose new construction. Turnabout is fair play. If owners organize politically to control supply, tenants can organize politically to control prices.

Regulations and taxes drive developers away.

Re: California Approves Statewide Rent Control

#389

Post by rileymat2 » Thu, Sep 12, 2019, 3:02 AM UTC

refurb wrote: post #314

justinhj wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is why vacant property tax makes sense for popular areas

So solve a problem created by regulations with more regulations?

The presumption (right or wrong) is that the problem the first regulations solved is bigger than the problem that the regulations created. After seeing this new (smaller) problem, more regulations are applied creating a new even smaller problem. Making life better.

This may or may not be true, but that is the idea.

Re: California Approves Statewide Rent Control

#390

Post by xoa » Thu, Sep 12, 2019, 3:03 AM UTC

pvelagal wrote: post #347

dgzl wrote: post #259

I'm a renter in Oregon and I've been outspoken about this long before the laws were passed. From my experience, people who support heavy laws, regulations and taxes don't spend enough time considering potential side effects. They feel like with enough support, they can just force anything they want to happen, while completely disregarding the market. I feel like an amount of the general public just wants Big Daddy go…

Well, i disagree with your opinion. Silicon Valley has been attracting a lot of people from lot of states, who all need housing. Remember , size of California is fixed. Housing in Silicon valley doesn't grow at the same rate as number of people coming here. Added to that, foreigners living in foreign countries ( who have never visited USA, who have no intention of living in USA) are able to own land/houses in silicon…

>Remember , size of California is fixed

Yeah, fixed at ~164 thousand square miles (~400,000 km^2). Are you for real? Los Angeles and New York City proper (not the metropolitan areas) are interestingly nearly identical in official area at around 468 square miles each. But LA has a density of around 8000/mi^2 while NYC is well over 27000/mi^2. If LA merely matched NYC that'd cover another 10 million or so population by itself. The size of freaking California is not remotely a limiting factor, the limiting factor is not enough high density buildings.