“Your monthly rent .. shall increase from $2145 to $8900” • Hacker News Board

Re: “Your monthly rent .. shall increase from $2145 to $8900”

#541

Post by tptacek » Mon, Mar 16, 2015, 11:55 AM UTC

simoncion wrote: post #516

tptacek wrote: post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's worse than a losing battle; it actually makes the housing problem worse. It's good for the lucky few who end up in rent-controlled housing, but most of the people who can't afford $4k/mo rents also aren't that lucky.

How does it make the housing problem worse in San Francisco? If we assume that the NIMBY crowd will continue to block new development and other interests will continue to block increases to the high limits for new construction across much of the city, then what would elimination of rent control do, other than ensure that every renter in the city was paying ~$2500+/month per bedroom? I have this idea that the monthly…

The "NIMBY crowd" also must stop blocking new development. SF desperately needs new housing development at a scale unprecedented in its recent history.

In the meantime, all rent control does is create an arms race between property owners and tenants, one the tenants will all gradually lose. It also eliminates incentives to renovate or even more productively use existing housing stock.

Re: “Your monthly rent .. shall increase from $2145 to $8900”

#542

Post by pingswept » Mon, Mar 16, 2015, 11:56 AM UTC

ghshephard wrote: post #296

pingswept wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How can you verify your assumptions about whether or not a commenter owns real estate? For example, do I own real estate in San Francisco? I think your chances of getting that right are pretty close to 50%.

You haven't made any comments about Real Estate ownership, so I can't make any guesses. I really like Warren Buffet's perspective, the rules one believes are right, should be created without you knowing what your circumstance will be . That is, if you are trying to determine what is right, or not, about rent controls, you should create without knowing whether you will be renter, or an owner. I've never met a real est…

I agree with you that we should agree to a set of rules without knowing our circumstances.

But the rest of your argument doesn't make sense. You've never met an SF real estate owner with a certain opinion, so you know something about most of them? There are at least 10,000 SF real estate owners. Have you talked to more than 0.1% of them? And even if you had, how would that help with your original claim that you can identify whether commenters in this thread were SF real estate owners or not?

Re: “Your monthly rent .. shall increase from $2145 to $8900”

#543

Post by kailuowang » Mon, Mar 16, 2015, 11:57 AM UTC

IgorPartola wrote: post #17

jackowayed wrote: post #3

If 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,…

Does any economist disagree that free market is more efficient than a price regulated market, i.e. provide more people with more bousing? Its not just about the liquidity at the demand side, at the supply side, rent control makes it harder for market to create more supply to meet the demand.

From a human right perspective, I am not sure I agree that a person have the right to live at the same place forever as long as he maintain the same income just because he used to live there. Maybe a couple of years but it shouldn't be forever.

Re: “Your monthly rent .. shall increase from $2145 to $8900”

#544

Post by charlesdm » Mon, Mar 16, 2015, 11:58 AM UTC

zobzu wrote: post #425

refurb wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In SF the only real way to kick someone out of a rent controlled unit is via an Ellis Act eviction. The allows the owner to take the building off the market. Issue is, you need to pay a substantial fee to the tenant (many thousands if they've been there a long time) AND you cannot rent the unit out again for 5 years.

it actually sounds fair, doesn't it?

Sarcasm? How does that sound fair for the owner. Not being able to rent out your apartment for 5(!) years is ridiculous.

Re: “Your monthly rent .. shall increase from $2145 to $8900”

#545

Post by ryan_j_naughton » Mon, Mar 16, 2015, 12:47 PM UTC

simoncion wrote: post #516

tptacek wrote: post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's worse than a losing battle; it actually makes the housing problem worse. It's good for the lucky few who end up in rent-controlled housing, but most of the people who can't afford $4k/mo rents also aren't that lucky.

How does it make the housing problem worse in San Francisco? If we assume that the NIMBY crowd will continue to block new development and other interests will continue to block increases to the high limits for new construction across much of the city, then what would elimination of rent control do, other than ensure that every renter in the city was paying ~$2500+/month per bedroom? I have this idea that the monthly…

Rent controlled apartments are effectively removed from the supply of housing in the market. Thus, anyone who isn't lucky enough to get a rent controlled apartment (which are most people) faces a market with decreased supply and thus higher prices. It's one of the economically proven ironies of rent control -- higher prices for everyone else.

Re: “Your monthly rent .. shall increase from $2145 to $8900”

#546

Post by TheHypnotist » Mon, Mar 16, 2015, 12:59 PM UTC

necrodawg wrote: post #389

TheHypnotist wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Judging by the series of downvoted comments in this thread, are you surprised? Apparently circumventing rent control is OK amongst the HN crowd.

Cause libertarians.

Until their rent quadruples. I'd like to be there an here them say "Welp, free market dictates my rent going up 400% and that's okay!"

Re: “Your monthly rent .. shall increase from $2145 to $8900”

#547

Post by dragonwriter » Mon, Mar 16, 2015, 1:00 PM UTC

remarkEon wrote: post #209

dragonwriter wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Neither gasoline nor food are "free markets", even approximately. Government actively intervenes to influence the supply and price of gasoline, and actively intervenes in food, subsidizing both production and consumption. So, if whatever is being done for gas and food works well, that's not an endorsement of the free market.

I think the point was that no one is asking for price controls in those markets, despite the fact that we all need those goods to function - not that food/gas represent the text book cases of market equilibrium.

But that's basically not true, or at least misleading; production subsidies for food are sold as a means of controlling retail prices, as are many policies related to gasoline. That's quite a lot of political pressure which manifests in actual policy for government to actively manage process in both domains, even if the actual policy isn't price controls in the sense of a de jure upper limit on retail prices.

Re: “Your monthly rent .. shall increase from $2145 to $8900”

#548

Post by dragontamer » Mon, Mar 16, 2015, 1:01 PM UTC

EpicEng wrote: post #387

dragontamer wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then lets say someone's house due to foreclosure from a variable-rate mortgage. Happened all the time a few years ago, and its the same situation. The interest rates rose, people couldn't afford their mortgage anymore and were forced out.

While there is definitely a lot of blame to be placed on the creditors, don't you hold the homeowners to any standard of responsibility? They signed the mortgage.

It was an example of how people place bets against the "Free Market" and lose sometimes.

Even if people are rational about this, the 1980s saw an increase of interest rates above and beyond 14%. If 1980s style stagflation ever hit today, I can assure you that even the "rational" home-buyers who fully understood the clauses would be forced out of their homes.

In any case, being forced out of your home, even if it is a situation you set yourself up for, is a traumatizing situation. I think we all can agree to that.

Re: “Your monthly rent .. shall increase from $2145 to $8900”

#549

Post by Lazare » Mon, Mar 16, 2015, 1:01 PM UTC

dnr wrote: post #505

Lazare wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Swedish economist (and socialist) Assar Lindbeck asserted, 'In many cases rent control appears to be the most efficient technique presently known to destroy a city—except for bombing.'" Rent control is one of the small number of policies that economists on the left and right are essentially unanimous (93% in a survey of US economists; 95% in a survey of Canadian ones) in agreeing are always harmful, because they red…

It seems likely that the owners will "change their mind" and decide to convert the "storage area" back into an apartment once the tenant is gone and they can rent at market rate again.

Actually, no.

Remember, according to the link, the landlord has gone through some efforts to make this hard to challenge, including legally changing the status of the building to single-family. That's a very difficult process[1], but the reverse is even harder. (If converting single family dwellings into multi-tenant units was easy, San Francisco wouldn't have much of a housing crisis.)

Given the huge legal obstacles, plus the fact they already removed the bathroom and kitchen (not cheap), plus given the already strong trend of multi-unit dwellings being converted into single-unit dwellings to fuel demand from the rich, it seems unlikely that this building is going to be multi-tenant any time in the foreseeable future.

(Unless the landlord screwed up and didn't get the paperwork done. In which case they won't be able to raise the rent. But that doesn't seem to be the case.)

[1]: http://www.quora.com/How-hard-is-it-to-get-a-duplex-or-set-o...

Re: “Your monthly rent .. shall increase from $2145 to $8900”

#550

Post by dragonwriter » Mon, Mar 16, 2015, 1:03 PM UTC

ryan_j_naughton wrote: post #545

simoncion wrote: post #516

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does it make the housing problem worse in San Francisco? If we assume that the NIMBY crowd will continue to block new development and other interests will continue to block increases to the high limits for new construction across much of the city, then what would elimination of rent control do, other than ensure that every renter in the city was paying ~$2500+/month per bedroom? I have this idea that the monthly…

Rent controlled apartments are effectively removed from the supply of housing in the market. Thus, anyone who isn't lucky enough to get a rent controlled apartment (which are most people) faces a market with decreased supply and thus higher prices. It's one of the economically proven ironies of rent control -- higher prices for everyone else.

It's not an irony, because subsidizing based on certain qualifying factors at the general expense is the point of rent control.