Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

California Approves Statewide Rent Control

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

511–520 of 1001 posts

Re: California Approves Statewide Rent Control

#511

Post by yocheckitdawg »

dcolkitt wrote: post #487
dgzl wrote: post #409

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Construction isn't easy anymore. we've taxed and regulated it into a luxury.

Maybe, but construction may not even be necessary. Shipping containers can now be easily retrofitted into stylish apartments. They can easily be stacked eight stories tall. 95% of the work can be done in overseas factories and is subject to the same globally competitive downward price pressure as every other manufactured good. Build them in Shenzen at a wholesale cost of $30,000 per pod, ship them to San Franciso for…

Who the fuck wants to live in a shipping container?

Re: California Approves Statewide Rent Control

#512

Post by camjohnson26 »

dcolkitt wrote: post #487
dgzl wrote: post #409

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Construction isn't easy anymore. we've taxed and regulated it into a luxury.

Maybe, but construction may not even be necessary. Shipping containers can now be easily retrofitted into stylish apartments. They can easily be stacked eight stories tall. 95% of the work can be done in overseas factories and is subject to the same globally competitive downward price pressure as every other manufactured good. Build them in Shenzen at a wholesale cost of $30,000 per pod, ship them to San Franciso for…

I genuinely can’t tell if this is sarcasm or not because there are definitely people with this level of economic illiteracy.

Re: California Approves Statewide Rent Control

#513

Post by jethro_tell »

tmh79 wrote: post #310
jethro_tell wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

until they need a two bedroom for a kid. rent control works great if you have your shit together and have no life changes coming up. If you're settled in your life and you already have a place, rent control is great, if you're going thought the life change stage of your life, rent control doesn't help to much. Rent goes up to market when you move out to go to college, then it goes back to market after you leave colle…

"The answer is still more housing to lower the overall price of housing." I am not arguing against that at all, but if we decide to go extreme SB50 style urbanize California we wouldn't see real price impacts for maybe 5 years at the earliest. What are we supposed to do between now and then, just accept 15% YoY rent increase?

IF this was passed at the same time as laws that allow more housing and tapered off after the expected return of more houses, I'd be fine with it. But as it stands now, the idea of rent control until more housing is a pipe dream since the more housing part never seems to come.

The studies are clear, rent control is a benefit to a few but long term doesn't really add much value and instead makes the market stagnate in funny ways.

Re: California Approves Statewide Rent Control

#514

Post by rtkwe »

pitaj wrote: post #172
52-6F-62 wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a vacuum, yes. Just as much as on paper 0.1+0.2=0.3 but in most floating point implementations it doesn’t. In application Toronto has seen the opposite effect to what you describe. We hear this argument over and over as we just had our rent control stripped, but it’s counter to the experience. Here’s one write-up: https://urbantoronto.ca/news/2018/11/people-why-universal-re...

Your article says this: > So far, empirical evidence shows that rent control has not crippled the purpose-built rental market. But the economic concensus is exactly the opposite. https://www.economist.com/the-economist-explains/2015/08/30/... https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/12/business/economy/rent-con... https://www.businessinsider.com/does-rent-control-work-no-it... https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2018-0…

Those (The few of those I could actually read, thanks paywalls!) all focused on the effects on owners bringing rental units out of the market and don't really show that there was an overall decrease in the number of housing units available. The economist article for example doesn't have any real info on the effect of rent control just the fairly standard arguments about it affecting the willingness of land owners to build.

Re: California Approves Statewide Rent Control

#515

Post by human20190310 »

AmericanChopper wrote: post #492
coliveira wrote: post #471

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Talking about "regulation" doesn't really say anything. All laws, good and bad are regulation. There is regulation passed by businesses, and very few passed by citizens. When you cry about regulation, it is similar to crying about the water being wet or over having to breath. In modern society, very few things are done without regulation. Even basic rights that we take for granted, such as freedom of speech, are guar…

I’m not sure what this is supposed to contribute to the conversation. Regulations make it simply impossible for housing supply to keep up with demand in California (and lots of other places too). This point in particular is not even contentious as far as I can tell. If you want to fix the problem, the only way to do it is to relax zoning and permit regulations. Trying to fix over-regulation with more regulation will…

> This point in particular is not even contentious as far as I can tell. If you want to fix the problem, the only way to do it is to relax zoning and permit regulations.

This has already been proposed by Scott Wiener as SB50. It was opposed by local councils and never put to an actual vote, and it never will be, unless political pressure is applied in the form of counter-regulation.

Re: California Approves Statewide Rent Control

#516

Post by closeparen »

claudeganon wrote: post #316
dgzl wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand how that's possible. Housing is a good/service, how can that be decommodified?

Social housing exists in many forms across the developed world. As I commented up-thread, look into its history in places like Vienna.

Social housing just manifests the imbalance in waiting lists instead of prices. It's not like people who get stuck in the queue are having a better time than people who can't afford the market rate.

Building more housing in desirable places to accomodate shifting demand and growing population is just as important under social housing, but even less likely, since the demand is totally disconnected from the incentives and capital required to do it.

Re: California Approves Statewide Rent Control

#517

Post by refurb »

irq11 wrote: post #467
busterarm wrote: post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The rent control laws in NYC aren't even nearly as bad as SF, despite how much they get demonized here on HN. In NYC units that might be _actually cheap_, as in rent controlled and not stabilized, number roughly 17k units _in total_. And only about 1/3 of those are significantly below market or in desirable neighborhoods. It's almost insignificant and the number of rent controlled units has gone down by roughly HALF…

The rent control laws in SF aren’t even as bad as HN comments would have you believe. Rent control doesn’t apply to new construction in SF. It also allows a regulated annual increase, and rent automatically jumps back up to market upon a number of different conditions - not the least of which is that the owner can push you out to renovate the building! HN commenters are usually just repeating stuff they heard somewhe…

Rent control in SF really is that bad. Rent increase limits are 60% of CPI, so it can’t even match inflation. If your costs go up (utilities) or you want to do capital improvements, good luck getting the rent board to approve a pass through. Want to prevent other people than the tenant from moving into a 1 bedroom? Tough, can’t say no to that, it just has to be under 3 people. Want to move into your own house? Sure, just pay the tenant a few tens of thousands in “pay off”.

SF rent control is absolutely onerous and definitely shrinks the pool of potential landlords and thus potential units.

Re: California Approves Statewide Rent Control

#518

Post by majormajor »

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…

> because larger adjustments cannot be made if and when necessary due to market conditions

When are "larger adjustments" necessary vs just opportunistically profitable?

The question I always see is "why shouldn't I have the right to make as much money as possible from my investment," but the answer seems pretty clear: because evictions and massive rent hikes have nasty social consequences, as does treating rent-seeking as an investment.

Re: California Approves Statewide Rent Control

#519

Post by skybrian »

t34543 wrote: post #480
SquishyPanda23 wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm shocked at the ideological fervor here Really? This is pretty common on HN. This is IMO one of its weaknesses. There are certain topics that bring out political rants. One is regulation and another is housing prices in the bay area. This story brings out both.

Plastic, climate change, and identity politics also bring out radical behavior.

Also, privacy and anything somehow related to Google or Facebook.

Re: California Approves Statewide Rent Control

#520

Post by AmericanChopper »

sgc wrote: post #503
AmericanChopper wrote: post #492

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not sure what this is supposed to contribute to the conversation. Regulations make it simply impossible for housing supply to keep up with demand in California (and lots of other places too). This point in particular is not even contentious as far as I can tell. If you want to fix the problem, the only way to do it is to relax zoning and permit regulations. Trying to fix over-regulation with more regulation will…

As I said above, they don't even need to ease the regulations, just work faster for permit approval and charge less for them, and the problem could largely sort itself out.

The cost of compliance is really a minor factor here. The problem is that zoning laws simply prohibit building enough hosing to meet demand. The zoning laws in LA, the Bay Area and elsewhere will ensure an ever-worsening and never ending housing shortage for as long as they exist in their current state.
Post reply on HN