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How Rent Control Drives Out Affordable Housing

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Re: How Rent Control Drives Out Affordable Housing

#61

Post by calambrac »

mmmurf wrote: post #56
mdasen wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cato tends to be a little simplistic in their models. For example, with immigration they say it has no ill effects. Well, in the long-run I'd probably agree with them (save for the fact that natural resources are being split among more people which I think would be made up for in other ways that they cite). In the short term, it takes time for economies to adapt to changing tastes, changing spending patterns, essenti…

Immigration: I don't think you really disagree with Cato. Arguing that immigration restrictions should be eliminated does not necessarily entail that one believes the restrictions should be lifted all at once. Rent Control: Rent control causes higher prices for everyone except those who happen to have a rent-controlled apartment, because it discourages improvement of existing properties and discourages building new p…

Just addressing the on-topic portion of your comment (not that the rest wouldn't be worth commenting on, just not enough time or energy) - I really don't understand your criticism of rent control.

"It causes higher prices for everyone not under rent-control."

Yes, but that's almost the whole point of rent control - people aren't being displaced by the folks bidding up the price of all the other apartments to absurd levels. The article makes it sound like without rent control everything stabilizes into this beautiful bell curve with housing for everyone, but it doesn't actually provide any evidence for this (other than showing less populated and geographically confined cities without rent control).

"Discourages improvement of existing properties"

Because the properties are certainly more important than the people living in them, right? I mean, our goal as a society should be as many improved properties as possible.

"Discourages building new properties"

This one baffles me: new properties aren't subject to rent-control in the vast majority of cases. It seems like rent-control is almost a direct stimulus to build new properties.

"I don't really feel sorry for someone getting a huge apartment for way below market price."

What about feeling sorry for someone who has made their home somewhere for 20+ years and is now getting shoved out because they made a tv show that was set in the neighborhood and a bunch of young overpaid professionals want to play cool for a couple of years?

Re: How Rent Control Drives Out Affordable Housing

#62

Post by jmtulloss »

toby wrote: post #50
timr wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. I live in a rent-controlled apartment in San Francisco, and it is not squalid, the landlord is not crooked, and neither I, nor the other tenants, are politically powerful. I heard a lot of horror stories about rent control before I moved here, but so far the stories haven't approximated the reality. Perhaps the problem lies the details of the rent control policies in question, and not with the concept of rent…

I also live in a rent-controlled apartment in SF. I'm not sure what the particular policy in Boston is, but here they can increase the rent by 3%/year (I think) while I live there. After I leave, they can reset it to whatever they like. So, in principle, if market rents increase a lot, the landlord has an incentive for me to leave. I think there's another side to this though: I've been a great tenant for a while and…

The question for both of you is how did you get the rent controlled apartment? I bet it wasn't through craigslist. Everybody I know in the city who lives under rent control (which, admittedly, is not very many) found their places through friends.

Not that it's a bad thing, but it supports the idea that you have to be "connected" to get a place. Maybe not a lawyer or a judge, but having been around the city helps.

Re: How Rent Control Drives Out Affordable Housing

#63

Post by DaniFong »

The article seems to ignore one thing: rent control helps people stay together, and in doing so helps communities stay together. The examples they give of communities with rent control and higher rents are places I'd want to live in. They have real community fabric. This counts for something, though I'm not sure how much.

Re: How Rent Control Drives Out Affordable Housing

#64

Post by calambrac »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #58
calambrac wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"To evade various ridiculous NYC taxes (which make a lot of new construction unviable), you need to submit to rent control." Agreeing to not displace people to cash in on temporary market swings seems like a better tax shelter than some others I've heard of. "Sky high rents come from current demand. Rent control provides a disincentive to long term investments like new construction or major renovations to rental buil…

"This doesn't make any sense. Without the current rent-control laws, the incentive would be to keep the housing supply low and spike rental rates." Only if there were a monopolistic housing provider. Absent rent control, the incentive for any individual housing supplier would be to build more houses and cash in. By your logic, dell should (in the absence of computer-price control laws) cut back on computer production…

"Only if there were a monopolistic housing provider."

Come on, man, housing isn't a commodity. If you're an owner charging whatever crazy price you can get in the LES as passive income on top of doing whatever you do as a day job, you're not interested in going out and spending the energy on amping production of more housing units. Plus, maybe you live in the neighborhood yourself, and you'd hate to see soulless apartment blocks go in, and if they did go in, all the charm and neighborliness that makes it so great and desirable in the first place disappears, and prices collapse. You really don't think that guy is spending his political capital on preventing new apartment construction in his awesome neighborhood? I know that's how it happens in the Mission in SF, where I'm living now.

"Living in a bad neighborhood is rewarded; the reward is cheap rent."

Until the rich people see you living there happily and drive up prices trying to be your new neighbor - hence, rent control.

"So if you argue for subsidizing hip locals who make a neighborhood attractive, do you also want to penalize disagreeable locals? If not, why not?"

I said subsidize the people who make the neighborhood desirable to live in. It's pretty cynical if you think that's just the hip locals who moved in only a little before the rest of the wave. Harlem is a little rough today in parts, but I fucking love that part of town. Crime hurts everyone; people who are less well-off have just as much right to live in a crime-free neighborhood as everyone else. Squint a little, and maybe you can see it another way: how much does it suck that the rich white people have to move in before a neighborhood gets policed properly?

Re: How Rent Control Drives Out Affordable Housing

#65

Post by fallentimes »

pg wrote: post #35
davidw wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Import tariffs and subsidies are direct market manipulation, and the market doesn't really route around them. Rather, they tend to wreck markets, which is one reason many developing countries continue to press the US and Europe to end farm subsidies - it's wrecking their export markets and hurting their farmers. Governments, when they want to, are perfectly capable of interfering with markets and even destroying them…

Tarrifs are actually a particularly good example of markets routing around government interference. Routing around tariffs is called smuggling, and has been a huge business as long as there have been governments. I wasn't claiming, incidentally, that markets were totally immune to government interference-- just as networks are not immune to damage. Just that markets will always find whatever room you give them.

Ticket scalping also involves equally fun acts & regulations. Luckily the laws are changing (for the better) which is one reason why it was a good idea to invest in us :-D.

Re: How Rent Control Drives Out Affordable Housing

#66

Post by timr »

jmtulloss wrote: post #62
toby wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also live in a rent-controlled apartment in SF. I'm not sure what the particular policy in Boston is, but here they can increase the rent by 3%/year (I think) while I live there. After I leave, they can reset it to whatever they like. So, in principle, if market rents increase a lot, the landlord has an incentive for me to leave. I think there's another side to this though: I've been a great tenant for a while and…

The question for both of you is how did you get the rent controlled apartment? I bet it wasn't through craigslist. Everybody I know in the city who lives under rent control (which, admittedly, is not very many) found their places through friends. Not that it's a bad thing, but it supports the idea that you have to be "connected" to get a place. Maybe not a lawyer or a judge, but having been around the city helps.

I got mine through craigslist. So did the other people I know who live in rent-controlled places.

Re: How Rent Control Drives Out Affordable Housing

#67

Post by benl »

gnaritas wrote: post #54
pelle wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Health care is no different than any other service. If you are able to increase the availability as well as lower the price it helps everyone. Including the poor.

Health is very different from other services, profit should not be the goal. Business does not attempt to help people, but to maximize profit, which does not necessarily mean increasing availability or lowering prices at all. It might be more profitable to dump the lower income people and jack up the prices on those who can afford it. Unlike other industries, getting service is often a literal life or death issue, yo…

Profit is the world's way of signaling that you are doing something in an efficient, effective, and long-term sustainable way.

So, given that health care is one of the most fundamental individual needs, profit most definitely should be the goal.

But health care is not the most fundamental need -- that would be food. I find it puzzling that people don't apply the same arguement to this need. Why not say that profit shouldn't be the goal of the food industry? And that supermarkets are immoral for making a profit at the expense of hungry people? Well, because it's clearly nonsense, of course.

But I wonder if it would seem like nonsense if we lived in a world where there was no free market in food supply. We might worry that greedy corporations would only be interested in serving expensive foods to rich people.

Re: How Rent Control Drives Out Affordable Housing

#68

Post by [deleted] »

toby wrote: post #50
timr wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. I live in a rent-controlled apartment in San Francisco, and it is not squalid, the landlord is not crooked, and neither I, nor the other tenants, are politically powerful. I heard a lot of horror stories about rent control before I moved here, but so far the stories haven't approximated the reality. Perhaps the problem lies the details of the rent control policies in question, and not with the concept of rent…

I also live in a rent-controlled apartment in SF. I'm not sure what the particular policy in Boston is, but here they can increase the rent by 3%/year (I think) while I live there. After I leave, they can reset it to whatever they like. So, in principle, if market rents increase a lot, the landlord has an incentive for me to leave. I think there's another side to this though: I've been a great tenant for a while and…

[deleted]

Re: How Rent Control Drives Out Affordable Housing

#69

Post by ojbyrne »

jmtulloss wrote: post #62
toby wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also live in a rent-controlled apartment in SF. I'm not sure what the particular policy in Boston is, but here they can increase the rent by 3%/year (I think) while I live there. After I leave, they can reset it to whatever they like. So, in principle, if market rents increase a lot, the landlord has an incentive for me to leave. I think there's another side to this though: I've been a great tenant for a while and…

The question for both of you is how did you get the rent controlled apartment? I bet it wasn't through craigslist. Everybody I know in the city who lives under rent control (which, admittedly, is not very many) found their places through friends. Not that it's a bad thing, but it supports the idea that you have to be "connected" to get a place. Maybe not a lawyer or a judge, but having been around the city helps.

I lived in a rent-controlled apt in SF that I found through craiglist. It wasn't cheap, nor squalid - Similar to what the other people say. My experiences over 20 years of renting also say - landlords treat good tenants like gold - if you don't make noise, don't sell drugs, and pay on time, they generally are happy to not raise your rent.

Re: How Rent Control Drives Out Affordable Housing

#70

Post by toby »

jmtulloss wrote: post #62
toby wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also live in a rent-controlled apartment in SF. I'm not sure what the particular policy in Boston is, but here they can increase the rent by 3%/year (I think) while I live there. After I leave, they can reset it to whatever they like. So, in principle, if market rents increase a lot, the landlord has an incentive for me to leave. I think there's another side to this though: I've been a great tenant for a while and…

The question for both of you is how did you get the rent controlled apartment? I bet it wasn't through craigslist. Everybody I know in the city who lives under rent control (which, admittedly, is not very many) found their places through friends. Not that it's a bad thing, but it supports the idea that you have to be "connected" to get a place. Maybe not a lawyer or a judge, but having been around the city helps.

It was through Craigslist... the deal is that every building in San Francisco built before a certain year (I don't remember which year) is rent controlled, so you don't really need a connection. The year cutoff is, I assume, to encourage developers to build new rental properties.

There was a proposition to ban rent control in California, which failed to pass.

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