111–120 of 326 posts
Now, I have not read the paper, but I would have thought the free market combined with sky-high wages and demand, combined with a lack of inventory, was the cause. Rent Control surely just prevents local families from being muscled out by the tech employees?
Rent control removes the incentive to build new apartments. There are second order effects that make it counterproductive. Even the socialist economists agree rent control is terrible.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
My mother-in-law is a land lord in Los Angeles I'm a tenant in Los Angeles, and a staunch supporter of rent control. Knowing that my rent (which is already high) can only go up so much year-over-year provides some bit of stability as the tech industry devours eastward from Santa Monica.
I've been paying attention to what economists say fairly rigorously for the last ten years and they have some huge blind spots. One of them is they completely and utterly ignore the importance of income and social stability. Which is they see any expenditures needed to provide those as a unacceptable drag on society.
This is literally an entire field of focus of economists and one of the fastest growing ones in the field. Have you considered that maybe you are the one that is ignoring the second-order effects of being a proponent of rent control and how it helps a specific person over a population?
This is what new rent control regulations in Toronto are doing... More than 1,000 planned purpose-built rental units have instead been converted to condominiums in the Greater Toronto Area since Premier Kathleen Wynne's government expanded rent control [1] It's making the housing crisis worse, not better. For those who already have low rent locked in, it's the ultimate "f k you, I got mine." [1] https://www.theglobea…
>This is what new rent control regulations in Toronto are doing... *according to the landlord lobbying group based on unknown data that even the report says they cannot guarantee the accuracy of.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If only landlords could be greedy with all their units, prices would average lower.
Your comment doesn't really address my point. The argument the article presents has less to do with free market fundamentalism than it does with landlords trying to get tenants of rent controlled units to leave in order to get market rates. That seems like the issue. Blaming rent control sounds a lot to me like blaming the victim for the crime.
This is a simple incentive. To expect landlords not to act in this manner is to ignore Economics 101. If you design policies and laws in such a manner that rational actors will... act rationally... and this is bad, then the problem is how you designed the laws, not the rational actors - no matter how "greedy" you think they are.
Of course it is. It artificially limits supply due to long term rent squatters taking advantage of the system
Aka people who lived there before the insane hikes in cost with rent control being the only thing keeping them from being forced out of their home due to greed-driven economic practices
AKA market rates.
Another second-order effect of rent control is increased traffic. Suppose you have two residents with significantly below-market-rate housing at the same quality level, one in downtown SF and another in Mountain View. The former starts a new job at Google in Mountain View, the latter starts a new job at a trendy start-up in downtown SF. Since they're paying significantly below market rate, they're unable to trade apa…
There is a lot of stickiness and inelasticity when it comes to housing, especially when other factors such as kids and schools and spouse's commute and all come up.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Heinlen in "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" introduces the idea of a legislature with 2 chambers. One for creating laws and the other for getting rid of them. The threshold for creating them being higher. The way it is now, everything is geared towards "doing" things, and credit is received for "accomplishments". Its usually much harder to undo things. It would be refreshing to have specialists in undoing things.
Has that ever been tried in practice?
Rent control solves some problems. Creates other problems. Similar to almost any intervention in free markets. Sometimes the cost of intervention outweigh benefits, sometimes they don't. Rent control allows people (wealthy or poor) to remain where they are without purchasing their residence. Unfortunately, to do accomplish this objective, it increases the price for new arrivals (be they wealthy or poor). In Californi…
> Sometimes the cost of intervention outweigh benefits, sometimes they don't. + Sometimes it works for a short period, as the policy reflected the economy at the time of creation, then becomes irrelevant via technology/market reaction to policy/general progress... but yet stays a policy for decades. The important point is that we rarely ever measures whether it does work or not, and policy tends to have an extremely…
Housing prices in California increased a crapload in the years before prop 13 was enacted. Real people with good jobs in new, modest houses they recently bought - not just granny in her 50 year old home - were in danger of being driven from their homes due to increases in property taxes.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>My mother-in-law is a land lord in Los Angeles ... She is a staunch opponent of rent control. Is this supposed to be surprising...? Regardless of whether it works for tenants, obviously rent control isn't there for the landlord's benefit.
I know several slumlords who have made a killing off of rent control. It rewards bad actors disproportionately more than bleeding hearts like GP's mother. Because slumlords are better able to extract profits from rent controlled properties, they are willing to buy them for more than they are worth to bleeding hearts. All rent controlled properties will be managed by slumlords in the long run.