Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

California Approves Statewide Rent Control

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

421–430 of 1001 posts

Re: California Approves Statewide Rent Control

#421

Post by PorterDuff »

decebalus1 wrote: post #94
bhauer wrote: post #21

I am a landlord in Oregon, but not California. The curious, although ultimately predictable, outcome of the new rent control measure in Oregon is that while I have historically had an arrangement with my property management to be restrained in annual rent increases, they are now advising a default annual increase of the maximum allowed (7 percent before inflation). This is because larger adjustments cannot be made if…

> The real solution to a housing problem is to incentivize and facilitate the building of more housing. You need to have some degree of control. I live in a suburb close to a tech hub in WA. They built a lot of housing in the past 3 years. And I mean a lot. At least a couple of hundred of apartments on the market every year, after raising 3-4 buildings at the same time, in a town of 20k people. One would think that t…

Perhaps it's similar to the economics of retail gasoline prices at gas stations.

Re: California Approves Statewide Rent Control

#422

Post by jachee »

zip1234 wrote: post #150
baby wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rent control is a thing world wide. It’s not populism. It’s the same concept as free healthcare or free education. It’s here to ensure people can still find affordable places to live. You can’t make everything an investment if you want a healthy society.

Except in practice people can't find affordable places with rent control because nobody is willing to leave their below market rate place. The real problem with it though is that it does not in any way fix the root cause of the problem, which is lack of supply.

The root of the problem is greed.

I'm a truly free market, rent would be outlawed.

Re: California Approves Statewide Rent Control

#423

Post by flatline »

zaroth wrote: post #398
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.

I dunno, a think a lot of homeowners would love to be able to build a little cottage in the back yard and cover half their mortgage renting it out.

I was thinking that too; but then, a lot more would complain about the renters at their neighbors’ house, increased traffic, noise, problems with lower income renters, HOA violations, and the ungodly backup at the city permitting office for any minor construction.

Re: California Approves Statewide Rent Control

#424

Post by jackvalentine »

dgzl wrote: post #414
jackvalentine wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Let's just not even talk about the fact that regulation is the reason why housing is scarce, let's just assume California is 100% at capacity. AKA ignore the entire foundation of the previous poster's point? Edit: upon re-reading your comment I think maybe you don't know what the phrase 'Turnabout is fair play.' means. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/turnabout_is_fair_play

Thanks for that, I didn't know this term. However I disagree with the idea that two wrongs make a right. Forcing the suffering around like that just creates more problems than it's worth.

In this case two wrongs may not make a right, but at least it shares some pain with the rent-seeking property owning class and may in time cause them to accept change.

It's a bit fatalistic but if we're going down anyway, we're going down together!

Re: California Approves Statewide Rent Control

#425

Post by dgzl »

TheReveller wrote: post #406
ralusek wrote: post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a landlord and would love decreased housing regulations, even if it decreases the value of my property by increasing supply.

When regulations allow for denser housing land prices go up because you can put more rentable dwellings in the same space.

Land prices go up because that's what it's worth. If the government says "you can't do this profitable stuff on your land", then the land is less valuable.

Re: California Approves Statewide Rent Control

#426

Post by masonic »

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.

  supply is not rising to meet demand
How will that aspect not worsen with added rent control?

Re: California Approves Statewide Rent Control

#427

Post by alexmlamb »

Has anyone done an analysis to see what fraction of the wealth generated by silicon valley ends up in the hands of people who happened to own land there? If normal houses cost millions of dollars, I could see it being a sizable fraction.

I think the pricing mechanism plays a useful role in encouraging people with valuable land to give it to others who will use it more productively. At the same time, I think there's a risk that people who just own land could capture an unreasonable fraction of the generated wealth.

Would it really be right for San Francisco homeowners to capture over 50% of the wealth from Silicon Valley's success?

Re: California Approves Statewide Rent Control

#428

Post by manfredo »

cabaalis wrote: post #367
baby wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stop making housing an investment?

I've seen this argument before. Why shouldn't it be an investment? 1. Land is a limited resource. 2. Property improvements last for a very long time, and are incrementally improved. 3. The buy-in price is relatively high, so only very interested parties get involved. 4. It's a home for goodness sake, why would you not call it an investment?

Housing cannot be both affordable and and a good investment. The definition of a good investment is a piece of property that has a price that increases over time. The nature of exponential growth means that eventually housing will become unaffordable if it is perpetually a good investment.

Society's expectation that housing is a good investment results in people taking on significant debt to buy increasingly expensive homes. The consequence is that homeowners have a huge incentive to suppress the construction of additional housing, to inflate the values of their homes. And when housing prices do fall, people's financial lives are ruined. Contrast metros like SF, Portland, and Seattle with places like Tokyo where homes can be bought for https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGbC5j4pG9w

Re: California Approves Statewide Rent Control

#429

Post by andrewprock »

amahani wrote: post #152
bhauer wrote: post #21

I am a landlord in Oregon, but not California. The curious, although ultimately predictable, outcome of the new rent control measure in Oregon is that while I have historically had an arrangement with my property management to be restrained in annual rent increases, they are now advising a default annual increase of the maximum allowed (7 percent before inflation). This is because larger adjustments cannot be made if…

You are absolutely correct: rent control (1) increases upward pressure, and (2) decreases rental supplies (and therefore drives up the price of rent) , and (3) benefits high-income earners when not coupled with income limits. (1) Since rent control laws put limits on increases (and not decreases) every landlord understands that he/she should test the upper boundary at all times to avoid renting severly below market r…

Keep in mind that CA has been operating with a variant of rent control since 1978 and the broader populace expresses wild support for it.
Post reply on HN