551–560 of 628 posts
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It's not a commodity, it's livelihood. SF renters are still making money, this is gouging.
It's an eviction by another name. The rent they are asking for is just a way to make it happen. There's no story here.
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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.
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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 i…
Someone living in a rent-controlled apartment will be a strong believer in rent control. Someone owning real estate will be opposed to rent control. What I find fascinating is that the same person with the same knowledge, background, and education might hold two diametrically opposite positions.
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It's not an irony, because subsidizing based on certain qualifying factors at the general expense is the point of rent control.
Your comment missed the irony, which is that rent control is an effort to mitigate the impact of scarcity for tenants that increases scarcity and reduces market outcomes for tenants.
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"econometrics of rent control" brings here. The fairly consistent econ 101 conclusion about rent control is that it never works. If you're talking about another conclusion, what is it?
Huh? The idea was without rent stabilization or leveling, rent would magically be more stable then if mechanisms were in place. We don't need to argue about this. Rent control has been removed from many communities, and the rent becomes much more volatile without the stabilization control. There's lots of actual case study literature on this. These things aren't mere untested hypothesis where our personal politics co…
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The major issue with SF is the lack of new housing being built at the first rung of the property ladder. Plenty of 1 million dollar plus units being built, but nothing for first time buyers. Worse the developers actively resist building affordable housing even when the city bends over backwards to accommodate them. Even worse is the amount of new office space being built. There simply isn't enough housing in the Bay…
> Plenty of 1 million dollar plus units being built, but nothing for first time buyers. What is affordable? I'm not in SF (or the U.S.), but as I understand salaries of $150k+ in tech are common. Mortgage repayments on a $1mm property work out to be ~$5,000 a month for a 35 year mortgage, which you can easily pay if you are earning that much.
(Also most of the units being built require HOA membership so tack on another 1k to your monthly outgoing)
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A better way for him to have put it would have been: "Just like the Indiana state legislature can't by statute declare pi to be 3.14, San Francisco cannot repeal the law of supply and demand". Rent control or not, the law of supply and demand still applies; it just expresses itself in more dysfunctional and unproductive ways. That's the problem with rent control. Reasonable people can disagree about whether the publi…
"Rent control or not, the law of supply and demand still applies... or about whether rent control works. It doesn't work." Without rent control, I'm pretty sure that a LOT more people would be pushed out of San Francisco. It seems to me that places like San Francisco, New York, and a few other places are not typical of what other areas experience. I know it's fashionable amongst the libertarian set to blame problems…
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Your comment missed the irony, which is that rent control is an effort to mitigate the impact of scarcity for tenants that increases scarcity and reduces market outcomes for tenants.
Rent control is a deliberate tradeoff between price stability for existing tenants and supply (and therefore market clearing price for new leases.) So the supply effect isn't an irony, it's part of the chosen tradeoff.
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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 i…
The meta point that I was trying to make, and I think is really important, not only in this context, but in a vast number of contentious threads, in HN and other arenas, is so often when we are voicing what we propose is a moral, or ethical position, is no more than a declaration of what our particular situation happens to be at that time. Someone living in a rent-controlled apartment will be a strong believer in ren…
But in the non-meta discussion, all I'm saying is that you don't know which commenters are in which situation, and especially not with 95% certainty, like you claimed. Some of the commenters might oppose rent control, even though they benefit from it. Other commenters might strongly support rent control in San Francisco, even though they live in Wyoming. We just don't know.
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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…
However, looking at the original post, I strongly suspect that the landlord isn't planning to rent out the apartment after the tenant is evicted. I think the letter looks a lot more like a landlord trying to get out of the business. Rent control, and other regulations, discourage people from offering places for rent. Sometimes that is intentional, for instance, as a policy to get rid of tenements. But often it's a surprise to the people writing the regulations. They honestly don't realize that each additional form they want people to fill out discourages people from being in business in any way.
Getting rid of rent control would get rid of some of that disincentive and put some places back on the market.
I recently moved from the Reno area to the New York area (well, New Jersey; but I work in New York). I spent a lot of time in the Bay Area over the last few years. I really would like to see it stop pursuing economically backwards policies, but I think it's more likely that economically illiterate politicians will finally manage to kill what makes Silicon Valley unique, and people will move to other places.