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California Approves Statewide Rent Control

nytimes.com

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Re: California Approves Statewide Rent Control

#111

Post by c22 »

mc32 wrote: post #47
ahelwer wrote: post #31

Perhaps an alternative real solution to the housing crises is the abolishment of professional landlords themselves. Why should we support a system where people can own many properties, each feeding them 1/2 of someone else's paycheck? Public-owned housing is the future. It works in Europe and it can work here. Treating housing as an investment vehicle is fundamentally incompatible with the ideal of housing being affo…

So how is housing going to get built? Are you suggesting that the state have a monopoly on buildings and housing? What process do we use to begin the expropriations and confiscations?

You don't need to confiscate anything. We have an abundance of housing stock (nationwide, many more existing homes than families to fill them). If you make it impossible to be a private landlord then these properties will decrease in value until most citizens can afford to buy a house. Public housing will only be necessary for a small percentage of outliers. New housing will be built to be sold at a modest profit and replace decaying stock, just as it is now. The only difference is owners will not be able to sit on the pot collecting rents from derelict buildings while they wait to optimize their redevelopment in a peak market.

Re: California Approves Statewide Rent Control

#112

Post by ng12 »

holy_city wrote: post #86
DevKoala wrote: post #22

Rent control is abused in SF. Every engineer I know, who has been living in SF for over 5 years is currently paying an absurd amount compared to their monthly income. I even sub-leased an apartment from a friend who took off a sabbatical, and he didn’t want to lose his rent control. I don’t know who rent-control is supposed to benefit, but it seems broken. Eventually these places end up in the hands of people who kno…

When I was interviewing for jobs in the Bay area I noticed entry level salaries (even at smaller shops) were in the range of 100-120k and rent was like 35-40% of your salary after taxes. Certainly higher than the recommended 30% but it's not that different from somewhere like LA or NYC, even Chicago and Miami aren't much cheaper. Are my numbers just totally off?

$120,000 comes out to around $6k/mo. A mediocre studio in SF is pretty close to $3k.

Re: California Approves Statewide Rent Control

#113

Post by dev_dull »

> For a quarter-century, California law has sharply curbed the ability of localities to impose rent control. Now, the state itself has taken that step.

Yep. Because communities shouldn’t be able to decide for themselves. Make it a state law. I’m just glad that (for now) these central planners are limited to a state economy and are not in Washington.

Great news for property owners in CA. Studies show over and over rent control legislation further restricts supply[1], so the existing housing will become even more valuable!

1. https://web.stanford.edu/~diamondr/DMQ.pdf

Re: California Approves Statewide Rent Control

#114

Post by Causality1 »

bhauer wrote: post #21

I am a landlord in Oregon, but not California. The curious, although ultimately predictable, outcome of the new rent control measure in Oregon is that while I have historically had an arrangement with my property management to be restrained in annual rent increases, they are now advising a default annual increase of the maximum allowed (7 percent before inflation). This is because larger adjustments cannot be made if…

Indeed. If you have a crises stemming from "not enough housing", increasing the number of potential customers for that housing is only going to make the lack of supply worse.

Re: California Approves Statewide Rent Control

#116

Post by olliej »

WheelsAtLarge wrote: post #76

I agree that at this point rent control is a good option. Housing prices are going up so fast that rents need to go up too. The higher rents then give an incentive for house prices to go up. It becomes a cycle for both to increase. But rent control by itself is not enough. The other leg of the solution is to increase housing via governmental incentives. Otherwise, rent control will make the situation worse since ther…

The problem is that increasing rent has no restraint in CA.

When a landlord increases rent by X% they are saying that the value of the property has increased by X%. Unfortunately businesses and landlords got together to push (and pass) prop 13 which amended the CA constitution to prevent assessed property value from increasing at more than 2% per year.

That means any time a landlord increases rent by more than 2% they are benefiting from incorrect taxable valuation. Because property taxes cover the infrastructure that supports homes + buildings (the roads, police, firefighters, teachers, etc) they are directly offloading the costs of those services onto people who don't own property: The people who don't own property then have to (in addition to insane rent increases) pay higher income taxes, in order to support those services the are functionally there to benefit the undertaxed properties.

Re: California Approves Statewide Rent Control

#117

Post by joshfraser »

When you mess with supply and demand there are always unintended consequences. I'm currently a beneficiary of rent control and am lucky to be paying below-market rate for my apartment. It would be nice to move to another neighborhood, but it would be dumb for me to give up the savings. My neighbor pays 1/10th of what I pay for the same size apartment. Neither of us are leaving anytime soon. This is why there's no liquidity in the SF housing market. They're trapped and live in constant fear of being evicted.

On a philosophical level, why should my landlord be subsidizing our housing costs? If we want to make housing more affordable for low-income families, surely there's a more equitable way to finance it.

Re: California Approves Statewide Rent Control

#118

Post by baby »

pitaj wrote: post #50
baby wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So are you saying that landlord should be able to double your rent like that?

Prices should increase in the case of increased demand. Prices must increase in that case if you want the supply to increase, which is the only way to actually meet demand. It's how the market works ffs.

I guess it shows how out of touch you guys are. When I moved here EVERYONE told me to find a rent controlled place. After hearing some horror stories I think you would be crazy to live in a non-rent controlled place.

Heck, I’ve never heard of non-rent control before moving to the US. No surprise there’s so many homeless people.

PS: look at what your free market did to the US healthcare.

Re: California Approves Statewide Rent Control

#119

Post by baby »

fuzzieozzie wrote: post #115

This rent control is a result of populism - plain and simple. Rent control works for those already renting - and that is about it! Everyone else suffers: those moving to the area, the landlords and those wanting to build more.

Rent control is a thing world wide. It’s not populism.

It’s the same concept as free healthcare or free education. It’s here to ensure people can still find affordable places to live.

You can’t make everything an investment if you want a healthy society.

Re: California Approves Statewide Rent Control

#120

Post by DevKoala »

holy_city wrote: post #86
DevKoala wrote: post #22

Rent control is abused in SF. Every engineer I know, who has been living in SF for over 5 years is currently paying an absurd amount compared to their monthly income. I even sub-leased an apartment from a friend who took off a sabbatical, and he didn’t want to lose his rent control. I don’t know who rent-control is supposed to benefit, but it seems broken. Eventually these places end up in the hands of people who kno…

When I was interviewing for jobs in the Bay area I noticed entry level salaries (even at smaller shops) were in the range of 100-120k and rent was like 35-40% of your salary after taxes. Certainly higher than the recommended 30% but it's not that different from somewhere like LA or NYC, even Chicago and Miami aren't much cheaper. Are my numbers just totally off?

Remember to factor in taxes. You will only see 6k a month cash on 120k a year after maxing our your 401k. A tiny studio will go from 2.5 to 3.5k last I checked.
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