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Landlords Are Pushing the Supreme Court to End Rent Control

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31–40 of 81 posts

Re: Landlords Are Pushing the Supreme Court to End Rent Control

#31

This is the natural consequence of Citizen United (such a dishonest name). When those with money is allowed to leverage their wealth to disproportionately affect legal proceedings and lawmaking, it is just a step towards dystopia.

It's called capitalism for a reason. What are you suggesting as an alternative?

Re: Landlords Are Pushing the Supreme Court to End Rent Control

#32
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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California basically did this[1]. Sadly though the desirable coastal areas are literally full and all spoken for and even without any real zoning anymore there’s nowhere to actually build. So you’re gonna need to eminent domain some Malibu mansions to make room for the non stop line of 1+5s from LA to SF. It’s also interesting to me how many people propose increasing supply when there is nowhere to build, but can’t e…

California can develop all the canyons that keep catching on fire.

Until it’s Kolowoon Walled City from Tijuana to Oregon it’s not enough!

Re: Landlords Are Pushing the Supreme Court to End Rent Control

#33

This is the natural consequence of Citizen United (such a dishonest name). When those with money is allowed to leverage their wealth to disproportionately affect legal proceedings and lawmaking, it is just a step towards dystopia.

It's called capitalism for a reason. What are you suggesting as an alternative?

Capitalism is a monetary policy, not a form of government. In the US, it is becoming a form of government to the detriment of democracy. When people cannot voice their opinion through voting, it tends to end badly.

Here’s hoping the rich folks figure that out before it’s too late to solve with democracy.

Re: Landlords Are Pushing the Supreme Court to End Rent Control

#34

This is the natural consequence of Citizen United (such a dishonest name). When those with money is allowed to leverage their wealth to disproportionately affect legal proceedings and lawmaking, it is just a step towards dystopia.

There are a lot of problems with lobbying but in this case I don’t see the relevance. With sufficient appeals any case could theoretically be taken to the Supreme Court.

It’s not like you can pay to skip the process.

Re: Landlords Are Pushing the Supreme Court to End Rent Control

#35
post #29
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the government should serve the interests of those that aren’t residents to the detriment of those that do?

Local governments have finite power given to them by state and federal government. So, the argument is more that state and federal government should actually exercise their authority to fix the underlying problem. Abstractly hyper local optimization is suboptimal.

Strong statement. Got any proof of that?

All governments get their power from the people who they serve. As soon as they do not serve the interests of the people the represent they should be dissolved. Local government gets its power from the local people and no one else.

Re: Landlords Are Pushing the Supreme Court to End Rent Control

#36
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not sure what your point is.

Typical issue of why you vote at all. Your influence to the result drop significantly from your town meeting, to local to state to federal. Obviously you cannot just have local gov otherwise it is impossible to coordinate some project. But some issues are better local. The problem is which is which and if conflict how to resolve them. Not sure there is an answer.

If a city votes on what to do with the homeless, they might get a solution.

If the entire nation votes on it, the solution will be “send them all to California”.

Re: Landlords Are Pushing the Supreme Court to End Rent Control

#37

Rent control is dumb policy anyways. Now how can we get rid of nimby rule? Local governments have way too much influence on development, for better or worse. Perhaps sufficiently large development proposals must be entertained by the entire city or town rather than being unilaterally decided by a board - that seems like a sufficient compromise (at the expense of speed, but development is slow anyway given the appeals…

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I certainly hope we lack the political will to use force to stop people from voting in their best interests.

Re: Landlords Are Pushing the Supreme Court to End Rent Control

#38
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the government should serve the interests of those that aren’t residents to the detriment of those that do?

Yes, if you want to address the issue. Whether you should is another question. That is what the higher levels of government do. When the majority of citizens need something, you essentially use threat of violence to take it by force. You will never fix the "nimby problem" any other way.

> When the majority of citizens need something, you essentially use threat of violence to take it by force.

Basically a rehash of colonialism (or something that rhymes with it). We want a resource that the existing people on the land (NIMBYs, this time) have, so we'll take it using force.

It certainly rhymes with how we’ve done things in the past. And there's even a nifty phrase for it - the tyranny of the majority.

And I've gotta ask... why do we "need" these specific parcels of land? Especially in a time where so much work can be done from anywhere in the US. There's plenty of land, why are we so eager to use force to take these highly specific parcels?

Re: Landlords Are Pushing the Supreme Court to End Rent Control

#39
post #25

Unpopular opinion: rent controls should be used only in times of drastic changes in housing supply or demand, and have short time limits equal to what it would take to resolve a housing crisis. Sudden change in demand or natural disaster destroys 20% of housing stock: 3-5 years of rent control. Otherwise we are just using politics to torque the market, "taking" capital from owners/landlords, and generating non-market…

Rent controls should be part of development deals.

Imposing them post-development distorts the market and causes weird side effects (people refusing to move even when they “should”, illegal subletting, etc).

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