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How Rent Control Drives Out Affordable Housing

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Re: How Rent Control Drives Out Affordable Housing

#111

Post by yummyfajitas »

calambrac wrote: post #106
yummyfajitas wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Believe it or not, there are a ton of people who don't act exactly how economic theory says they maybe should." All it takes is a few people to behave greedily. And again, how come the condo market in NYC doesn't have these problems? "Because it was your sweat-equity that made it not very bad." I think you've got me confused with the cops. I did nothing to improve Jersey City or Harlem, I just live here. "...you're…

"All it takes is a few people to behave greedily." A few people acting greedily forces an unwilling owner to sell out? That makes no sense. "And again, how come the condo market in NYC doesn't have these problems?" I didn't address this before because it sounds like something you're pulling out of your ass - and you said it yourself, your building was built for condos but used for rent b/c the market for condos wasn'…

"A few people acting greedily forces an unwilling owner to sell out? That makes no sense."

You think ALL property owners in NYC are unwilling to sell? You think ALL builders/landlords are unwilling to build investment properties, and are unwilling to sell to those who will?

"I didn't address this before because it sounds like something you're pulling out of your ass - and you said it yourself, your building was built for condos but used for rent b/c the market for condos wasn't there. What, exactly, do you want me to argue against here?"

You claim that builders are not greedy enough to create new housing in response to market demand, or that there are other monopolistic factors preventing this.

Yet for some reason, they build new condos. Why don't these same factors prevent condo construction?

"Cute. 30-60 days, that does make things way easier. Gives people plenty of time to find a place they can afford that's really far away from their current job,..."

And someone else is now close to their current job and gets more time with their family. Why do the stationary deserve that more than the mobile?

"Subsidizing the needy isn't my goal. "

In that case, why try to equate mobility with wealth? The two are not very strongly related, if at all.

Re: How Rent Control Drives Out Affordable Housing

#112

Post by jfoutz »

davidw wrote: post #55
pg wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'd bet that smuggling is a tiny trickle compared to what the market could provide with many commodities (wheat, cotton, corn, stuff like that, not diamonds and rhino horns), meaning that the market is not effectively routing around it at all.

False.

In Colombia, 4.5 kg of coca paste, which will yield about one kilo of cocaine, fetches about $4,500. On the streets of the United States, selling this kilogram of cocaine will earn between $200,000 and $600,000. (http://www.colombiajournal.org/colombia150.htm)

Claritin 10 mg Consumer Price (100 tablets): $215.17 Cost of general active ingredients: $0.71 (http://www.rense.com/general54/preco.htm) normalized to 1 kilo ... cost $71,000, value $21517000.00

what did we bet again? :)

Re: How Rent Control Drives Out Affordable Housing

#113

Post by dk »

calambrac wrote: post #99
yummyfajitas wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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." So basically, you believe landlords/builders are 1) greedy when it comes to raising rents 2) not greedy when it comes to building more houses. And superpowerful, able to prevent a…

"So basically, you believe landlords/builders are 1) greedy when it comes to raising rents 2) not greedy when it comes to building more houses." Yes. Believe it or not, there are a ton of people who don't act exactly how economic theory says they maybe should. "And superpowerful, able to prevent any other greedy people from building housing and renting it for a profit." When you're out of new land to build on (NYC or…

To my mind the word "greedy" suggests people who put their own interests above those of others, very often employing the coercive powers of the government to serve themselves and to the detriment of everyone else.

This certainly includes many among the rich and powerful, but I don't think this brush can be applied to developers in general. What is their goal in places where there is no more land to build on, like NY and SF, but to reconfigure it and make it more available (affordable) to more people? Of course they seek profit and some people are substantially inconvenienced in the process, but in the broad perspective it creates value. Whatever its flaws, Manhattan offers more to more people now than it did 100 years ago.

Are they not greedy, those who are renting their spots in these desirable locations and who are using the government's guns to keep others out? As a voting constituency they're leveraging the force of government to serve their own individual interests, seemingly unconcerned about the consequences for everyone else.

I find it ironic that they wield the term "greed" with immunity.

Re: How Rent Control Drives Out Affordable Housing

#114

Post by calambrac »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #111
calambrac wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"All it takes is a few people to behave greedily." A few people acting greedily forces an unwilling owner to sell out? That makes no sense. "And again, how come the condo market in NYC doesn't have these problems?" I didn't address this before because it sounds like something you're pulling out of your ass - and you said it yourself, your building was built for condos but used for rent b/c the market for condos wasn'…

"A few people acting greedily forces an unwilling owner to sell out? That makes no sense." You think ALL property owners in NYC are unwilling to sell? You think ALL builders/landlords are unwilling to build investment properties, and are unwilling to sell to those who will? "I didn't address this before because it sounds like something you're pulling out of your ass - and you said it yourself, your building was built…

"You think ALL property owners in NYC are unwilling to sell? You think ALL builders/landlords are unwilling to build investment properties, and are unwilling to sell to those who will?"

No, when did I say anything that implied that?

"You claim that builders are not greedy enough to create new housing in response to market demand, or that there are other monopolistic factors preventing this.

Yet for some reason, they build new condos. Why don't these same factors prevent condo construction?"

No, I claimed that the removal of rent control would incentivize some owners to oppose new construction, and that current rent control doesn't disincentivize new building.

"And someone else is now close to their current job and gets more time with their family. Why do the stationary deserve that more than the mobile?"

Seriously? You're seriously claiming that the person who just moves into an area has equivalent roots in the area as the person who has lived there since 1971? Come on, be serious.

"In that case, why try to equate mobility with wealth? The two are not very strongly related, if at all."

Yeah, people moving into expensive areas and bidding up rent prices generally aren't wealthy, my bad.

Re: How Rent Control Drives Out Affordable Housing

#115

Post by calambrac »

dk wrote: post #113
calambrac wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"So basically, you believe landlords/builders are 1) greedy when it comes to raising rents 2) not greedy when it comes to building more houses." Yes. Believe it or not, there are a ton of people who don't act exactly how economic theory says they maybe should. "And superpowerful, able to prevent any other greedy people from building housing and renting it for a profit." When you're out of new land to build on (NYC or…

To my mind the word "greedy" suggests people who put their own interests above those of others, very often employing the coercive powers of the government to serve themselves and to the detriment of everyone else. This certainly includes many among the rich and powerful, but I don't think this brush can be applied to developers in general. What is their goal in places where there is no more land to build on, like NY…

How does letting a person stay in their home in the face of wild market fluctuations work to the detriment of everyone else, exactly? Wealthier people have to pay more for non rent-controlled apartments or commute a bit further - this hardly seems like a great cost to bear to avoid uprooting the families and communities that made these locations desirable in the first place.

Re: How Rent Control Drives Out Affordable Housing

#116

Post by dk »

calambrac wrote: post #115
dk wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To my mind the word "greedy" suggests people who put their own interests above those of others, very often employing the coercive powers of the government to serve themselves and to the detriment of everyone else. This certainly includes many among the rich and powerful, but I don't think this brush can be applied to developers in general. What is their goal in places where there is no more land to build on, like NY…

How does letting a person stay in their home in the face of wild market fluctuations work to the detriment of everyone else, exactly? Wealthier people have to pay more for non rent-controlled apartments or commute a bit further - this hardly seems like a great cost to bear to avoid uprooting the families and communities that made these locations desirable in the first place.

Based on your other comments, I don't think wild market fluctuations are really the issue here, are they? If they somehow disappeared, would you yield rent control to accommodate broad market trends?

Re: How Rent Control Drives Out Affordable Housing

#117

Post by michaelkeenan »

gnaritas wrote: post #81
benl wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 sh…

The problem with that viewpoint is it assumes people are inherently good; they aren't. When profit is the goal, people suffer. I find the idea that seeking profit automatically creates the best good rather naive and idealistic. Of course people don't apply the same argument to food, food isn't scarce for most of us and few have problems acquiring it and the ability to produce it can't be easily collected in the hands…

I have sympathy for your point of view. But I worry that attempting to remove the profit motive from healthcare could result in potential doctors choosing different professions.

A problem with society having "certain expectations" of doctors - or anyone else - is that extra expectations (above "do a job so that trading with you helps the world") are a disincentive from getting into that profession.

All that said, I suspect that a purely free-market healthcare system would be worse for the very poor than a socialist one like England (unless the culture had a particularly enthusiastic charitable ethic. Maybe that would develop? Does government charity crowd out private charity?).

Re: How Rent Control Drives Out Affordable Housing

#118

Post by natrius »

calambrac wrote: post #114
yummyfajitas wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"A few people acting greedily forces an unwilling owner to sell out? That makes no sense." You think ALL property owners in NYC are unwilling to sell? You think ALL builders/landlords are unwilling to build investment properties, and are unwilling to sell to those who will? "I didn't address this before because it sounds like something you're pulling out of your ass - and you said it yourself, your building was built…

"You think ALL property owners in NYC are unwilling to sell? You think ALL builders/landlords are unwilling to build investment properties, and are unwilling to sell to those who will?" No, when did I say anything that implied that? "You claim that builders are not greedy enough to create new housing in response to market demand, or that there are other monopolistic factors preventing this. Yet for some reason, they…

"Yeah, people moving into expensive areas and bidding up rent prices generally aren't wealthy, my bad."

My impression was that in a housing market without rent control, people are displaced by periodic, incremental yet substantial increases in rent, not a one-time multiplication of rent. If that's the case, then it's not an issue of the poor being displaced by the wealthy. It's people being displaced by others who are a rung or two above them on the economic ladder.

You're also not taking into account poorer people who want to move every once in a while instead of staying in the same place. They end up having to pay the rent control tax each time they move just like the "wealthy." Taxing mobility is rife with unintended consequences.

Re: How Rent Control Drives Out Affordable Housing

#119

Post by pelle »

jacobolus wrote: post #107
davidw wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many government policies could be seen as "social engineering", be they farm subsidies, tariffs on imports, spending on things like highways, subsidized communication networks like the postal system, education for people other than those born wealthy, meals for poor kids so that they have something in their stomachs at school and can actually try and think, and so on. And, yes, some of them get 'routed around'. Other…

> For an extreme example, see Cuba, where social engineering routed the market, with results that are disastrous in many ways. Disastrous for whom? Compared to what? Cubans have a high literacy rate, high life expectancy, low numbers of extreme poor, etc. Indeed, the country has done much better than similar Caribbean/Latin American states which followed different political paths over the past few decades. The govern…

Low numbers of extreme poor? You have followed a bit too much propaganda and not enough reality it seems.

The only country that is worse off in the entire region is Haiti. Probably more than 90% of the population is in extreme poverty. Worse than this Cubans was actually better off than most Europeans before Castro. They may have more doctors per capita now a days, but there is no food and no medicine.

Re: How Rent Control Drives Out Affordable Housing

#120

Post by calambrac »

dk wrote: post #116
calambrac wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does letting a person stay in their home in the face of wild market fluctuations work to the detriment of everyone else, exactly? Wealthier people have to pay more for non rent-controlled apartments or commute a bit further - this hardly seems like a great cost to bear to avoid uprooting the families and communities that made these locations desirable in the first place.

Based on your other comments, I don't think wild market fluctuations are really the issue here, are they? If they somehow disappeared, would you yield rent control to accommodate broad market trends?

Rent control only exists in places where wild market fluctuations were displacing people.
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