While this is inconvenient for the tenant, it's not unfair. Rent control is unfair. Now, with the proceeds, the landlord might invest in new flats which will mean more housing for everyone.
“Your monthly rent .. shall increase from $2145 to $8900”
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Re: “Your monthly rent .. shall increase from $2145 to $8900”
#152Is that legal? In NYC, there are laws in place to limit the amount a landlord can raise rent.
In NYC it depends on the property. Unless the property is rent stabilized, rent can legally be raised by any amount the landlord pleases. Example: http://www.brickunderground.com/blog/2013/08/rent_coach_can_...
Re: “Your monthly rent .. shall increase from $2145 to $8900”
#153Earlier quoted context omitted.
They converted the other unit in the building to storage (after hassling that tenant out). I don't think it's anything like 'isn't getting on', the landlord wants to convert the building to some other use and simply doesn't care about the tenants, which isn't the same as finding them disagreeable or whatever (one imagines they might want to do something like sell it as a private home).
You really think they will keep it as storage? Once the remaining tenant is out they will renovate everything and rent both units again.
I don't know what they will do with the building. I brought up the storage because it makes their motivation clearer, they weren't getting rid of the tenants for any sort of personal reason, it's about using the building for something else (or as you say, putting it back on the market at higher rates).
Re: “Your monthly rent .. shall increase from $2145 to $8900”
#154Earlier quoted context omitted.
OTOH, how much can you restrict the property owner? What if the other unit needed to be knocked down for a reason other than to get rid of rent control? Would it be OK for the law to tell the owner to fix it some other way? What if both units were destroyed in a natural disaster and a new structure had to be built from nothing? Is that still rent-controlled? Also, is rent control even a good idea? In the short term,…
If you own the building, i'd say you should be free to do what you want. Just because you rented out a unit 5 years ago doesn't mean you want to rent it out forever. You own the building after all. Imagine a building with 20+ units, you'd never be able to clear it out. But, that doesn't make it a fun process to go through for a renter. It sucks. Couldn't the owner just ask the person who is renting the unit to move o…
> Couldn't the owner just ask the person who is renting the unit to move out in a reasonable amount of time?
California has a provision for doing this. It's called the Ellis Act and San Francisco's regulations for Ellis Act evictions require payment of $5k-$15k + $3k per senior/disabled tenant. This remodel + rent increase seems a transparent attempt to circumvent that law. Whether legal or not would require a lawyer to weigh in.
Re: “Your monthly rent .. shall increase from $2145 to $8900”
#155If you read the caption, the real issue here is a horrible abuse of the rent control law. When the renter signed their lease, the unit was covered by rent control, putting very tight restrictions on rent increases and evictions. However, the landlord then essentially destroyed the other unit in the building so that they could reclassify the building as a single-family home instead of a multi-unit building. Single-fam…
OTOH, how much can you restrict the property owner? What if the other unit needed to be knocked down for a reason other than to get rid of rent control? Would it be OK for the law to tell the owner to fix it some other way? What if both units were destroyed in a natural disaster and a new structure had to be built from nothing? Is that still rent-controlled? Also, is rent control even a good idea? In the short term,…
What you're missing is that housing is not a normal good.
Sure, there is a housing marketplace, which can provide some correction. But houses are also homes. People are born in them. People die in them. They love them, they cherish them, they fight for them. There's a lot of truth in the saying, "Home is where the heart is."
What you're missing in that scenario is the large number of people who are displaced not just from their fungible, replaceable housing unit, but their home, their neighborhood, their family, and perhaps their city and their job.
Note also there are substantial class issues in the sentence, "Lower income renters move out, higher income families move in." The notion that poor people should take it on the chin because rich people covet their homes is not politically neutral. One could just as well say that it's the rich people, more able to cope, that should bear the burden of market fluctuations.
So I don't think, "is rent control even a good idea" is the right question. It's more like, "Are there more effective ways than rent control to reduce the harm?"
Re: “Your monthly rent .. shall increase from $2145 to $8900”
#156If you read the caption, the real issue here is a horrible abuse of the rent control law. When the renter signed their lease, the unit was covered by rent control, putting very tight restrictions on rent increases and evictions. However, the landlord then essentially destroyed the other unit in the building so that they could reclassify the building as a single-family home instead of a multi-unit building. Single-fam…
there are several factors involved in this:
1. Apparently this family has tried this once before and failed, but learned from their mistakes.
2. The lawyer is a real estate broker.
3. This bypasses having to pay for the tenant to be evicted through Ellis.
4. This bypasses other provisions in Ellis and preserves rentability: If they used Ellis, they could not evict the tenant and then rent the place out for 5 years without offering the tenant the option of renting the place at the previous price (other companies bypass this through voluntary evictions by buying out tenants, for, say $30k)
At the end of the day: This bypasses the intent of the law but follows the letter of the law. The intent is to sell the house. They pay less by not buying out the tenant. They preserve the rentability. Reclassifying while a tenant is protected under rent control should be prohibited.
Re: “Your monthly rent .. shall increase from $2145 to $8900”
#157If you read the caption, the real issue here is a horrible abuse of the rent control law. When the renter signed their lease, the unit was covered by rent control, putting very tight restrictions on rent increases and evictions. However, the landlord then essentially destroyed the other unit in the building so that they could reclassify the building as a single-family home instead of a multi-unit building. Single-fam…
OTOH, how much can you restrict the property owner? What if the other unit needed to be knocked down for a reason other than to get rid of rent control? Would it be OK for the law to tell the owner to fix it some other way? What if both units were destroyed in a natural disaster and a new structure had to be built from nothing? Is that still rent-controlled? Also, is rent control even a good idea? In the short term,…
On strictly economic terms, I agree with you. The trouble with the plan you describe is that essentially guts neighborhoods. The very vibrant, interesting neighborhoods that draw people to San Francisco in the first place. By the time the correction occurs, the networks of lower-income people that tend to be the bedrock of the more interesting urban neighborhoods have been disrupted, often fatally. That ship may have sailed, rent control or no.
Re: “Your monthly rent .. shall increase from $2145 to $8900”
#158This is a perfect example of why rent control is a terrible system that leads to market inefficiencies and worse outcomes for a community. The law has made it more profitable for this landlord to remove housing stock and charge market rate for the remaining unit than to rent out both units in the building under rent control laws. Cities with low vacancy rates like SF need to rethink their approach to housing if they…
If not for rent control, my studio apartment would be over $3,000 a month. Everyday I thank rent control.
So what? Why do you think you should get to live somewhere highly desireable at a below market rate?
Re: “Your monthly rent .. shall increase from $2145 to $8900”
#159This is a perfect example of why rent control is a terrible system that leads to market inefficiencies and worse outcomes for a community. The law has made it more profitable for this landlord to remove housing stock and charge market rate for the remaining unit than to rent out both units in the building under rent control laws. Cities with low vacancy rates like SF need to rethink their approach to housing if they…
Completely agree with you. However, I think SF has already ceased to be an attractive place to live. I don't live there, so maybe it's not a fair comment, but I would not want to live there for the same reason I don't like flushing money down the toilet.
> I think SF has already ceased to be an attractive place to live.
Or as Yogi Berra allegedly once said: "Nobody goes there anymore. It's too crowded."
Re: “Your monthly rent .. shall increase from $2145 to $8900”
#160Earlier quoted context omitted.
The law was passed in 1979. It's hard to seriously claim landlords could possibly be unaware of the law before becoming a landlord. If for some reason they just can't possibly see themselves in any other career, they may also choose to solely invest in buildings built since 1980.
Maybe I'm a bit ignorant here, but I don't always know the laws about things I'm doing before I do them. If I wanted to rent my apartment out I wouldn't go searching for laws--I'd go searching for tenants (and a basic lease agreement I could modify). If there's a required course or something, I guess it would make sense then.
I recommend you change that attitude.
It doesn't take long to learn the basic laws about something that are most likely to affect you. And then consult a lawyer for anything you are not sure about.
Do you have insurance? Same principle.