What's the Matter with San Francisco?

Arguably true.

> I understand the problems rent-control causes, but if it were removed and all residential areas jump up to market price then diversity would be completely destroyed.

As a matter of theory, it's hard to see that rent control actually protects diversity. And emperically, it's absolutely not doing that, in San Francisco or in other cities which have tried it.

Here are you choices:

1. Remove restrictions on building. Housing will be plentiful, diversity will be expanded, but what currently makes the city special will be lost (and maybe it'll end up even better, but it'll certainly change). 2. Maintain restrictions on building. Housing will be scarce, diversity will be lost, but the city won't change.

Rent control is entirely orthogonal to this. IF you have scarce housing, then you must allocate it among the people who want it. One way to do this is via the market. If you do not like the way the market will allocate it, then you can cap the rents and allocate it in some other fashion. But as a society, we are extremely bad at allocating things fairly (hence why we rely on markets so much; it's not that they're very good, it's that we're really crap).

Which means that the way housing under rent control will inevitably be allocated isn't going to preserve diversity. Rent control makes the lucky few who get to live in the city even luckier, but it doesn't tell you who ends up being one of those lucky few. But we know, from decades of experience, that the lucky few end tend to up being the already privileged.

Notice that San Francisco—with strong rent control laws—is actually not a diverse city. Oakland—with weak ones—is one of the most diverse cities in the US. Similar patterns can be seen across the US. Your assumption that rent control aids diversity is supported neither by theory nor evidence; the fact that rent control could enable the poor to afford to live in a city doesn't mean that it will. And it doesn't.

What really helps diversity is having a lot of housing relative to the number of people who want to live there. San Francisco has scarce housing.

Anyone who has spent time around more than a handful of addicts knows that the addict experience spans the range of human personality types: slothful, industrious, peaceful, violent, smart, and dumb. Go to an AA meeting and you will see them all, just as you do in everyday society. And while there are certain personality traits that many addicts share (impulsiveness, etc), these traits have nothing to do with laziness or industriousness.

So while rewarding sloth makes for happy lazy people, the only thing that causes drug addicts is... drug addiction. And its causes -- mostly biological, but also situational -- go far beyond what anyone could describe in an HN comment.