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

Rent collections are down in New York

politico.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

341–350 of 594 posts

Re: Rent collections are down in New York

#341

Post by archagon »

lmm wrote: post #336
archagon wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One, we vote for it, and there's far more renters out there than owners. Sorry. Two, there are many "free protections" that are taken for granted at our stage of civilizational development. Should fire departments be privatized? Police? I'd argue that housing security is even more important than those. We bear the costs together so that our lives are collectively better. Three, your entire framing is kind of bananas.…

> there are many "free protections" that are taken for granted at our stage of civilizational development. Should fire departments be privatized? Police? I'd argue that housing security is even more important than those. We bear the costs together so that our lives are collectively better. But we don't. Everyone who works in the city is paying the costs, while the lucky few who moved in decades ago are the only ones…

I moved to my city less than three years ago, not ten. I was not “lucky” to get my rent-controlled apartment: just had some foresight and was diligent in my search. My rent is high, but not as egregious as what the recent AI migrants are paying. (New upstairs neighbors are literally paying $2000/m more than we are for the same floor plan.) Thankfully, I have no fear of getting kicked out of my home due to a sudden rent spike, so I can focus on building a life.

None of this seems egregious to me. Yes, existing residents are prioritized over new residents. This feels like an obvious tradeoff if you want to maintain community and QoL. The alternative is prioritizing the rich — landlords and wealthy renters alike. I do not want to live in a city where money has the final say.

Re: Rent collections are down in New York

#342

Post by Iulioh »

epsteingpt wrote: post #198

For those looking for the actual data. It's from 2024 - says nothing about the current situation. * ~37K affordable housing units (baseline) across ~400 projects * 89% rent collection rate (down from 90.6% in 2023) * That's 600 units that went 'delinquent' in 2024 - assuming a $24K 'base' rent (just a guess) that's $15M in lost rent. * Deeply troubled projects (that can't survive without this rent) are at 11% - seems…

Is charging just enough rent to reasonably mantain the building such a strange prospect?

Re: Rent collections are down in New York

#343

Post by kelnos »

lmm wrote: post #336
archagon wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One, we vote for it, and there's far more renters out there than owners. Sorry. Two, there are many "free protections" that are taken for granted at our stage of civilizational development. Should fire departments be privatized? Police? I'd argue that housing security is even more important than those. We bear the costs together so that our lives are collectively better. Three, your entire framing is kind of bananas.…

> there are many "free protections" that are taken for granted at our stage of civilizational development. Should fire departments be privatized? Police? I'd argue that housing security is even more important than those. We bear the costs together so that our lives are collectively better. But we don't. Everyone who works in the city is paying the costs, while the lucky few who moved in decades ago are the only ones…

> If everyone got to pay the same level of rent then I'd maybe support it, but there's nothing "collective" about the people who got here quicker protecting themselves while pulling the ladder up behind them.

I'm very sympathetic to this sort of framing, but I don't think that's happening here. Or if it is, then pulling up the ladder is a pretty reasonable, rational thing to do when you're protecting against other people climbing that ladder and throwing you back down to the ground.

Re: Rent collections are down in New York

#344

Post by pyrale »

pantalaimon wrote: post #311
woodpanel wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one absolutely no one considers that to be remotely true. Look at French banlieues, German Plattenbauten or British Councils - they are synonymous with Crime and physical as well as cultural despair. And while Vienna or Stockholm are often cited as Utopias, the citees often intentionally leave out the negative side effects (ie. Waiting-times of years, housing black markets, etc) that are eventually coming full cir…

This was aggravated by modern city planning with it's separation of function that left these new districts with no third spaces, barely any shops and large spaces of 'no man's land' between buildings. In classics European cities there were shops on street level and dense blocks that generated demand for those. The post war developments followed the 'high rise in the park' concept, lots of greenery and parking lots be…

High rises were far from being the only, or even the dominant model for social housing in Europe. Different plans such as low rises, semi-detached houses and single homes also got implemented.

Re: Rent collections are down in New York

#345

Post by abhinai »

itake wrote: post #74
CursedSilicon wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anecdotes aren't usually admissible as evidence, is the thing

https://www.discovery.org/a/nightmare-tenant-in-bellevue-con... I’m on phone but if you search “Kim Seattle landlord” you can get more details of various articles on the situation.

That is such a sad article.

Re: Rent collections are down in New York

#346

Post by kelnos »

pixelatedindex wrote: post #100
ethbr1 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> especially in these large cities with kooky renter protections that make it nearly impossible to evict someone The problem is that there will always be more voting renters than voting landlords. So in a purely democratic system, policies which favor renters at the expense of landlords will always be supported. And that said, some renter protections are definitely needed, because there is a subset of landlords that…

> The problem is that there will always be more voting renters than voting landlords. So in a purely democratic system, policies which favor renters at the expense of landlords will always be supported. I don’t know about that… the voting landlords (NIMBYs) sure make it a point to reduce development “to preserve their neighborhood character”.

You're conflating landlords with property owners as a whole. There are a lot more people who own and live in their home than there are landlords. Homeowners are less likely to favor pro-landlord legislation than landlords themselves, and many may even strongly support pro-renter legislation (like myself, though I agree some of the pro-renter legislation certainly goes too far).

The NIMBY "character of the neighborhood" phenomenon has nothing to do with landlords; that's a homeowner thing.

Landlords might be anti-development because a constrained housing supply means higher rents, but that's something else entirely. And if NIMBY homeowners magically stopped being NIMBYs tomorrow, we wouldn't even bother talking about NIMBYs anymore, because NIMBY landlords wouldn't have enough political power to matter.

Re: Rent collections are down in New York

#347

Post by pjc50 »

stahtops wrote: post #321
CalRobert wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely, but it's easier to build quality mixed use development and walkable, bikable neighbourhoods when you don't have thousands of NIMBYs screaming down every proposal.

Pick your favorite place on the planet. Then tell me if 8 billion people can live there, and would it be the same place if they did? I know the answer to both of these questions, and so do you.

"This solution won't work in , therefore let's do nothing!" -- common software engineering requirements management technique

Re: Rent collections are down in New York

#348

Post by archagon »

lmm wrote: post #332
majormajor wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NIMBYism and single-family zoning are alive and thriving in Dallas; what Dallas has is this thing called a huge-fucking-flat-prairie all around it that means Frisco, Addison, etc, have been able to add to the low-density car-centric sprawl and help keep prices down some. (But even then, plenty of Dallas residents have been upset in the past decade by what happens to rental prices when a bunch of higher-income folks m…

> One wonders why the people who don't want to have to leave a city like San Fransisco just cause some other people have more money than them and want to raise their rents out of their reach are the ones who should move to Texas. Why shouldn't the would-be newcomers just be the ones go to all those cookie-cutter new developments? Because my money should be just as good as yours? Why should you get a huge discount jus…

> Because my money should be just as good as yours?

You have more money than me, so you deserve to take my place? That’s pure entitlement and leads to cities comprised entirely of millionaires.

Re: Rent collections are down in New York

#349

Post by euroderf »

mullingitover wrote: post #227
epsteingpt wrote: post #198

For those looking for the actual data. It's from 2024 - says nothing about the current situation. * ~37K affordable housing units (baseline) across ~400 projects * 89% rent collection rate (down from 90.6% in 2023) * That's 600 units that went 'delinquent' in 2024 - assuming a $24K 'base' rent (just a guess) that's $15M in lost rent. * Deeply troubled projects (that can't survive without this rent) are at 11% - seems…

> We've tried free housing before - it suffered tragedy of the commons. Not paying means no ownership means subjugation to the worst actions of the worst members of society We tried cramming people from generational poverty into one place and it didn't go super great, therefore public housing as a concept must be the failure, and not our hilariously bad implementation? Singapore, Austria, Finland, and even a number o…

> We tried cramming people from generational poverty into one place and it didn't go super great, therefore public housing as a concept must be the failure, and not our hilariously bad implementation?

Well-stated! Yes, defective implementations with negative outcomes should not be used to make overly broad or even grossly incorrect assertions about human nature.

Re: Rent collections are down in New York

#350

Post by archagon »

sp527 wrote: post #200
inigyou wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because I'm rich, and I want to live in SF dagnabbit, and how dare the (checks notes) existing residents of SF vote to block me from taking one of their apartments that I obviously deserve to live in more than they do because I'm rich?

By that logic, we should let the Ohlone tribes underbid all existing residents. They too are just rich assholes who displaced those that were rightfully there before them.

I mean… you said it, not me.
Post reply on HN