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

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

#581

Post by eyeareque » Mon, Mar 16, 2015, 4:40 PM UTC

darkstar999 wrote: post #563

eyeareque wrote: post #464

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel for the renter, but shouldn't the landlord be able to do whatever they want with their property? Rent is going way up because there aren't enough homes in sf for the amount of people who want to live there. The city is to blame for this problem. Why is sf such a flat city? There should be a lot more tall condo buildings but as I've read it seems the city blocks any structure over 4 stories. Raising rent will c…

> shouldn't the landlord be able to do whatever they want with their property? Not under current SF rent control laws. The issue here is how the landlord is skirting around the law by making space unusable.

It is the law, but to utilize their property how they see fit they have to use a loop hole.

The city is basically making land owners give section 8 rent welfare to tenants, in a bid to keep the city affordable to long time residents during a housing shortage. You'd hope that the city would open up building more high rise housing (high end) to open up more space for the lower end of the community.

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

#582

Post by darknerd » Mon, Mar 16, 2015, 5:18 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.

In a free market yes, but not in a speculation market that does not respond market demands (combined with macroeconomic mechanisms and manipulations from the Federal Government). Going beyond simplistic supply/demand, high speculation markets have constrained economic growth, and many governments, such as HK or South Korea, have taken measures control it as well. It's not that the cost in the area rise, but also startup cost for new enterprises becomes to high, making it difficult for startups and new innovations they create.

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

#583

Post by DannyBee » Mon, Mar 16, 2015, 5:25 PM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #311

DannyBee wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, i understand the moral/ethical part, and i'm generally in favor of preventing price gouging. But the vast majority of complaints i've seen are more "my rent increased from 3000 to 4000", when all the other rents in the area are $4000. I had a bad experience myself renting in boston, that involved the health inspector fining the operating company about 20k.

Wait, really? You're in favor of artificial pricing constraints to avoid "gouging"? Doesn't virtually every reputable economist believe that those constraints decrease the supply of housing ? The moral dimension to rent control seems just as dubious as the legal one!

When I say price gouging, i mean the economic definition, which is a very very specific thing: IE when a coercive monopoly raise prices to levels that wouldn't exist if there was competition.

This does not decrease the supply of housing, because it's a monopoly, they are doing it because they can, not because supply is low.

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

#584

Post by DannyBee » Mon, Mar 16, 2015, 5:31 PM UTC

lsiebert wrote: post #164

DannyBee wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For at least the past thousand years, the bedrock principal of law has been "restraints on alienation of property are generally considered invalid". That is, property owners are free to do what they want with their property. Another is: Your rights cannot exceed those of who you got them from (IE tenants cannot have greater rights to land than landlords) Tenants are tenants for a reason. The whole point of ownership…

Interestingly, the idea that it's your property and you can do what you want with it was often the justification not to rent to people of color, the disabled, and other disadvantaged groups. The counter argument is, that the governments of regions, (cities, counties, states, etc) have to account for externalities that businesses don't consider or care about. Governments see benefits in keeping housing affordable. Do…

"Interestingly, the idea that it's your property and you can do what you want with it was often the justification not to rent to people of color, the disabled, and other disadvantaged groups."

Rent, maybe. Sell, no, since that would be a restraint on alienation :)

"Governments see benefits in keeping housing affordable. Do you like having restaurants with waiters, stores with clerks, streets that are swept, trash collected, and so on? then those people need places to live too."

Sorry, but I don't see how this problem doesn't solve itself without any intervention.

If none of these people can afford to live in your area, and they aren't getting paid enough to commute, they'll go elsewhere where they can.

In turn, your area will start to suck, so you'll either pay them enough to commute, etc.

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

#585

Post by wpietri » Mon, Mar 16, 2015, 5:33 PM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #558

dragonwriter wrote: post #554

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Can you find a source that acknowledges that rent control is a deliberate attempt to trade additional scarcity for price stability for incumbent residents? I can't find one. I'm a little concerned that this is an instance of retconning.

San Francisco's rent control, at least, doesn't apply to building built after rent control was passed. [1] I believe that's a deliberate attempt to solve for the scarcity concern.

[1] http://www.sfrb.org/index.aspx?page=1036

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

#586

Post by DannyBee » Mon, Mar 16, 2015, 5:35 PM UTC

gress wrote: post #179

DannyBee wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For at least the past thousand years, the bedrock principal of law has been "restraints on alienation of property are generally considered invalid". That is, property owners are free to do what they want with their property. Another is: Your rights cannot exceed those of who you got them from (IE tenants cannot have greater rights to land than landlords) Tenants are tenants for a reason. The whole point of ownership…

The concept of home is far older than 1000 years, and is deeply important to humans.

So let's go simple here:

Just because i've lived somewhere, means i get to live there as long as i want? So once someone's got theirs, nobody else gets a chance?

As I mentioned in another thread, i'm 100% not a fan of people having some magical right to continue to live somewhere just because they've lived in that place, or their parents have lived in that place, a while.

It's essentially "blood right", and I emphatically believe it's not a great way to decide who gets to live where.

Not that i'm a fan of just kicking people around continuously, mind you, but things that end up doing the above (like endless rent control), are not societal good to me.

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

#587

Post by mod » Mon, Mar 16, 2015, 5:41 PM UTC

kelnos wrote: post #500

mod wrote: post #488

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"A bit" is an understatement. You're overtly, obnoxiously pedantic when you reference a single dictionary and ignore common usage, particularly in this thread. Yes, I know, that sounds harsh, but "doing your homework" is a necessary precondition for being a pedant. Check another dictionary and it's part of the definition: http://www.thefreedictionary.com/rent (verb, 2) In common use, it's always in conjunction with a…

Touché, though I don't agree with you on the "common usage" bit. People do in fact "rent (a home) forever", and from what I've gathered it's not that uncommon, at least for cases where "forever" is a person's adult life span. Even considering the temporary case, what does "temporary" mean? 1 year? 2? 5? 10? Where's the cut-off where you've rented for "too long" and it's ok to be kicked out of your home? Even if you c…

Temporary means that you pay a month's rent and are entitled to usage for a month.

You don't pay rent and then come into permanent possession.

There is a (temporary) time period attached to a rent payment.

I don't entirely disagree with you here--I just think you're being a pedant to attempt a "technically correct" play.

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

#588

Post by remarkEon » Mon, Mar 16, 2015, 5:57 PM UTC

dragonwriter wrote: post #547

remarkEon wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

A subsidy is fundamentally different from a price ceiling, both in terms of its economic consequences and its implementation. There's nothing misleading about that. Both have significant political pressures behind them, but price ceilings manifested as rent control are near universally derided among economists.

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

#589

Post by cookiecaper » Mon, Mar 16, 2015, 6:01 PM UTC

simoncion wrote: post #526

cookiecaper wrote: post #510

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue is not that acquiring a tenant restricts some rights that the owner would otherwise have; this is a compromise that the landlord knowingly makes when he rents. That control is relinquished for a pre-agreed, limited period of time , after which control will be returned to the owner, is the essence of renting. The issue is that some people seem to believe that once they are on someone's property, that person…

> The issue is that some people seem to believe that once they are on someone's property, that person loses the future ability to determine how that property is used... Here's the thing, though. It's not as if existing rent control regulation catches landlords by surprise. If a prospective landlord is so unprepared as to be unaware of the rent control status of a property that he's planning on purchasing, then he's l…

Rent control doesn't grant tenants a permanent interest in the property, even if some rent control regulations make it annoying and/or arduous to remove tenants. The person I replied to suggested that landlords should be required to let their tenants stay in their property eternally if the tenant so chose, i.e., that tenants should have permanent control of the property.

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

#590

Post by shit_parade » Mon, Mar 16, 2015, 6:06 PM UTC

vacri wrote: post #407

maratd wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can use the same argument for any good or service. Tear something away from a person and you can absolutely traumatize them. It can be a teddy bear for a little kid, a car for an adolescent, your laptop, you get the idea. You can't legislate life into some gentle state. It is what it is. You can, however, smooth out the bumps. Unfortunately, rent control does the exact opposite. It creates stupidity like this. Wh…

You can't legislate life into some gentle state. So you don't believe laws against crime? You can use the same argument for any good or service. None of the things you mentioned have the universality of a home, which strikes almost everyone, regardless of demographic. Those who aren't adversely affected by not having a home are notable for being extreme outliers. As wpietri said, housing is not a normal good.

Making it illegal to be poor or homeless doesn't magically make the problem go away, or making it illegal to use drugs doesn't stop drug use -- in fact Portugal demonstrates that making drugs legal reduces drug use.

You know the single best way to reduce violent crime? It is to increase wealth, people don't risk bodily harm if they have enough money to eat and sleep under a roof.