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How Rent Control Drives Out Affordable Housing

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Re: How Rent Control Drives Out Affordable Housing

#181

Post by pelle »

gnaritas wrote: post #165
pelle wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You do live in a strange world very distant from the one that most of us readers of Hacker News lives in. Name me one real monopoly that isn't enforced through "social engineering". A free market may have ocasional dominant market leaders like IBM and MS in their time and Google today. None of them are or were monopolies as better technologies and startups will always (lets repeat that word ALWAYS) come around as lon…

No, I live in the real world where unrestrained free trade is bad because people seeking profit are not inherently good when they acquire too much power. See Standard Oil, John D. Rockefeller and some history about why we started trust busting in the first place. Your view that the free market works wonderfully if left alone is simply naive. The real world is simply more complex than that. In fact, your belief that t…

You yourself just answered why regulation can't ever work correctly: "The real world is simply more complex than that."

As a programmer you should know that extremely complex systems like the world can not ever be managed by a small group of super clever beings.

This has been the fallacy of each and every of "I'm smart you're not, I'll run things" philosophies originally invented by Plato and perfected by Marx.

The world is a complex system managed by 6 billion autonomous beings. Together these 6 billion autonomous beings for an extremely smart mega intelligence. While you, I and our "leaders" may be smarter than the vast majority of these individuals. Together though is another story.

I agree with your point about corruption as long as we assume the presence of a regulating entity. Corruption is essentially the markets way of calculating a price on overcoming social engineering.

But without regulators in the first place it would not exist and would simply be just other transaction between two or more parties.

Re: How Rent Control Drives Out Affordable Housing

#182

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.

[undent]

By my count you've used the term "wild fluctuations" or "wild market fluctuations" in four assertions / reassertions, and this started with my question to you based specifically on your use of this term. Its actual meaning and your intended meaning are certainly relevant to the conversation.

Re: How Rent Control Drives Out Affordable Housing

#183

Post by calambrac »

dk wrote: post #182
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.

[undent] By my count you've used the term "wild fluctuations" or "wild market fluctuations" in four assertions / reassertions, and this started with my question to you based specifically on your use of this term. Its actual meaning and your intended meaning are certainly relevant to the conversation.

I didn't realize it was such a loaded technical term. I thought it was glaringly obvious from my explicitly expressed concern about whether or not people were being displaced that I was referring to price increases. My bad.

You win the argument over the semantics of two words... congratulations?

Re: How Rent Control Drives Out Affordable Housing

#184

Post by dk »

calambrac wrote: post #183
dk wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[undent] By my count you've used the term "wild fluctuations" or "wild market fluctuations" in four assertions / reassertions, and this started with my question to you based specifically on your use of this term. Its actual meaning and your intended meaning are certainly relevant to the conversation.

I didn't realize it was such a loaded technical term. I thought it was glaringly obvious from my explicitly expressed concern about whether or not people were being displaced that I was referring to price increases. My bad. You win the argument over the semantics of two words... congratulations?

It's not a technical term to my knowledge and if it's a loaded term, I believe that would be by your choice ("wild"). This is not about the semantics of two words but about the proper approach to conversation about serious matters. Say what you mean and mean what you say. Be precise. Avoid exaggeration and equivocation. This matters far more than any particular subject under discussion.

Re: How Rent Control Drives Out Affordable Housing

#185

Post by calambrac »

dk wrote: post #184
calambrac wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't realize it was such a loaded technical term. I thought it was glaringly obvious from my explicitly expressed concern about whether or not people were being displaced that I was referring to price increases. My bad. You win the argument over the semantics of two words... congratulations?

It's not a technical term to my knowledge and if it's a loaded term, I believe that would be by your choice ("wild"). This is not about the semantics of two words but about the proper approach to conversation about serious matters. Say what you mean and mean what you say. Be precise. Avoid exaggeration and equivocation. This matters far more than any particular subject under discussion.

So... the proper approach to conversation about serious matters is to harp on someone for using terminology you don't like even though its blatantly obvious from context what they mean?

And honestly, I only ceded the point about the terminology because I thought it would prompt you to finally make your on-topic point. "Fluctuation" can certainly mean "movement from low to high" without being in error - read your own definition. I guess you really don't have anything to contribute, though.

Re: How Rent Control Drives Out Affordable Housing

#186

Post by mmmurf »

calambrac wrote: post #180
mmmurf wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that the item you mention is not a particularly strong argument, but I wanted to mention some examples of how rent control blocks a price signal that might even be useful for the beneficiary of rent control. I think it's uncontroversial that it blocks the price signal to renovate the buildings and to build new affordable housing as discussed above. But if you agree on the major point that the social engineeri…

Maybe I should have been more clear. I agree that social constructs designed to chain people to a given location are bad; I disagree that rent control is one of these constructs. It might be true that people tend to hang on to apartments that they otherwise wouldn't because they're getting a great deal, but this is a voluntary choice, not the company store. The bit about "allow[ing] the plant to catch flight and land…

For renovation, it's not just stainless steel appliances, it's little things over time. In 1 or 2 years it's not really noticeable but over 5-10 years it starts to take a toll. Even the building I used to live in used a large tarp on the roof rather than fixing some leaks that would drip through the ceiling of my apartment and cause bubbles in the drywall when we had heavy rain.

In the mission, I would prefer if a subsidy was just given to the poor via tax dollars. Say it's a $200 per household subsidy. Maybe it makes sense for that family to pay it to the landlord, but maybe it makes sense to find a cheaper apartment and spend it on a TV. If it turns out that the TV was the chosen decision, that helps drive down the price of rent b/c maybe the landlord will have a slightly harder time raising rent prices. If, on the other hand, the tenant chooses to allocate the money to housing, it will help drive up housing prices. The upside of driving up housing prices is that it now becomes more worthwhile for someone to convert their house into apartments, which in turn increases supply and would tend to help keep prices affordable.

Re: How Rent Control Drives Out Affordable Housing

#187

Post by calambrac »

mmmurf wrote: post #186
calambrac wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe I should have been more clear. I agree that social constructs designed to chain people to a given location are bad; I disagree that rent control is one of these constructs. It might be true that people tend to hang on to apartments that they otherwise wouldn't because they're getting a great deal, but this is a voluntary choice, not the company store. The bit about "allow[ing] the plant to catch flight and land…

For renovation, it's not just stainless steel appliances, it's little things over time. In 1 or 2 years it's not really noticeable but over 5-10 years it starts to take a toll. Even the building I used to live in used a large tarp on the roof rather than fixing some leaks that would drip through the ceiling of my apartment and cause bubbles in the drywall when we had heavy rain. In the mission, I would prefer if a su…

Of course it's not just stainless steel appliances - the thrust of the argument is that it's silly to think of buildings as more important than the people inside them.

Direct payment like you're advocating is a political non-starter. As paternalistic as it is, taxpayers don't like the idea that their money could be spent on anything, they want it to go only to the things they approve of.

Re: How Rent Control Drives Out Affordable Housing

#188

Post by DabAsteroid »

calambrac wrote: post #187
mmmurf wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For renovation, it's not just stainless steel appliances, it's little things over time. In 1 or 2 years it's not really noticeable but over 5-10 years it starts to take a toll. Even the building I used to live in used a large tarp on the roof rather than fixing some leaks that would drip through the ceiling of my apartment and cause bubbles in the drywall when we had heavy rain. In the mission, I would prefer if a su…

Of course it's not just stainless steel appliances - the thrust of the argument is that it's silly to think of buildings as more important than the people inside them. Direct payment like you're advocating is a political non-starter. As paternalistic as it is, taxpayers don't like the idea that their money could be spent on anything, they want it to go only to the things they approve of.

Direct payment like you're advocating is a political non-starter.

It is the only non-distorting form of wefare possible.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_Income

.

taxpayers don't like the idea that their money could be spent on [just] anything

What if no one paid or owed discrete taxes? In other words, what if there were no taxes on income or consumption?

.

http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/ConsumptionTax.html

The political wrangling obscured the real issues underlying a question that has occupied economists and tax experts for many years—whether individuals should pay any taxes at all on capital income. Strange as it may sound, most economists would agree that having zero taxes on capital income is theoretically the best thing to do.

.

http://www.irefeurope.org/col_docs/doc_26_fr.pdf

Several studies even demonstrate that, from the point of view of maximizing economic growth, the long-run optimal taxation is zero. Milesi-Ferretti and Roubini (1994), for instance, show that under very general assumptions the optimal tax burden on labour and capital income is zero. Jones, Manuelli and Rossi (1993b) and Bull (1993) add that even consumption taxes ought to be equal to zero ... no such thing as a progressive tax system should be allowed to exist. More precisely, as Sir Mirrlees (1971) showed, the marginal tax rate at the highest level of income should be zero. And finally, in our eyes, there should be no capital income tax.

Re: How Rent Control Drives Out Affordable Housing

#189

Post by mmmurf »

calambrac wrote: post #187
mmmurf wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For renovation, it's not just stainless steel appliances, it's little things over time. In 1 or 2 years it's not really noticeable but over 5-10 years it starts to take a toll. Even the building I used to live in used a large tarp on the roof rather than fixing some leaks that would drip through the ceiling of my apartment and cause bubbles in the drywall when we had heavy rain. In the mission, I would prefer if a su…

Of course it's not just stainless steel appliances - the thrust of the argument is that it's silly to think of buildings as more important than the people inside them. Direct payment like you're advocating is a political non-starter. As paternalistic as it is, taxpayers don't like the idea that their money could be spent on anything, they want it to go only to the things they approve of.

Well, the extreme case of non-upkeep is the vacant buildings in NYC, etc. When nobody can make a profit from a building, it gets abandoned. This isn't an overnight process. It starts by using a tarp on the roof instead of fixing the roof, and it ends when the building is abandoned and nobody has to pay any rent or fix any broken pipes, etc.

I agree that the public would rather "force evil landlords to do x" than achieve the social goal in a minimally economically distortionary way. It similar to how politicians give handouts to people who drive hybrid cars while at the same time fighting a hugely expensive war to prevent oil prices from increasing to the point where people would just buy electric cars because they were cheaper!

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