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California Approves Statewide Rent Control

nytimes.com

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Re: California Approves Statewide Rent Control

#591

Post by eecc »

yocheckitdawg wrote: post #511
dcolkitt wrote: post #487

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Well, in Amsterdam students:

https://www.studenten.net/artikel/wonen-in-een-container

Re: California Approves Statewide Rent Control

#592

Post by onlyrealcuzzo »

bbreier wrote: post #587
onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #567

Earlier quoted context omitted.

D.C. is probably a better example here. California is 1/6th of the US economy. It's not really creating "good" jobs relative to its size. And D.C. is only doing that because it's just one city. Cities are the winners in the current economy. They happen to be liberal. Cities in Texas and Tenesee happen to be conservative, and they're doing swimmingly also. Despite how much people get worked up, policy doesn't have a h…

> Cities in Texas and Tenesee happen to be conservative I don't know anything about Tennessee, but cities in Texas are not conservative. See these maps of 2012 and 2016 election results by county: https://www.chron.com/politics/election/local/article/Map-co...

That's a very recent development -- starting around 2008. Even still -- beside Austin -- they are barely liberal. You do realize places like SF, Los Angeles, NYC, Philadelphia, Boston, Chicago, Seattle etc vote democratic at rates close to 75% for like 30 straight years.

Even most southern cities like Atlanta, Jacksonville, Tampa, Orlando, and Miami are well into the 60s.

Even if Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio are like ~52% for the last 8 years, they're a bit of an outlier as far as major cities go.

Re: California Approves Statewide Rent Control

#593

Post by abalone »

jlebar wrote: post #576
fivre wrote: post #533

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They may not be some grand cabal, but if biggerpockets.com posts are anything to go by, I have no qualms with any pernicious attacks against them. Ruthless capitalism and fundamental human needs do not mix well.

Ruthless capitalism and fundamental human needs do not mix well. I dunno. I don't have much trouble finding reasonably priced, nutritious, and tasty food (cooked or as ingredients) anywhere I've visited in the world. Yet food is governed by ruthless capitalism, no? Surely we wouldn't argue that farm subsidies are all that's standing in the way between people getting a decent meal and chaos? What about...petroleum? Li…

Petroleum is literally exhibit number one of the failures of ruthless capitalism in that its negative externalities have led to the possibly irreversible destruction of our climate. This is not a good start to your argument.

> Or a "guaranteed public option"? Or is the idea to have more of a "centrally planned" housing market, where the means of production^W^W^Whousing stock is owned by The People but decisions about how to employ the housing stock is made by the government?

Basically yes. The “progressive” position on affordable housing generally calls for major government investment in housing. This is not a new idea; in the U.S., much of the big buildout of middle class housing last century was heavily subsidized by HUD.

Re: California Approves Statewide Rent Control

#594

Post by bronson »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #571
dgzl wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Land prices go up because that's what it's worth. If the government says "you can't do this profitable stuff on your land", then the land is less valuable.

I don't know where to stand on this issue. I wish everyone could afford basic living spaces, but if they could, there would be way more people, and the planet clearly cannot sustain that.

Preventing renters from living in high density housing will make the number of people on the planet go down?

Re: California Approves Statewide Rent Control

#595

Post by yojo »

joshAg wrote: post #457
cookiecaper wrote: post #399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So in other words, landlords love to reserve the right to kick a tenant they stop liking out at the drop of a hat for no specific reason, by jacking the rent up as high as they want. It's disingenuous to pretend like the landlord is the only party with any control. Landlords cannot remove a tenant at "the drop of a hat" by any stretch of the imagination, nor can they arbitrarily increase rental prices. Rentals usua…

>>> (If you're in California, you should also know that the new law punishes your landlord for trying to do you a solid and keep your rent stable across lease terms.) The CA law allows the rental price to reset to market rate for a new tenant, so unless the landlord doing you a solid was planning to stick you specifically with a rent increase down the line to recapture the present solid, they can still keep your rent…

I am a CA landlord of a single house. Keeping track of “market rate” is an annoying exercise and I tend to just leave the rate unchanged for multiple years (3-5) then bring it up in one go. The last time I did this the rent increased ~12%.

Before, the tenant was happy because they got below market rent for 4 years, and I was happy because I could defer pricing work without long term penalty or risking a move-out during an already busy year. This new law will likely result in my tenant paying more, and me working more at times I don’t want to work.

It’s not the end of the world, it’s just one more annoying piece of red tape that doesn’t seem to help anyone.

Re: California Approves Statewide Rent Control

#596

Post by Bahamut »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #318
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…

Have there been leasing periods in your past where rent increases exceeded 7 percent? Is that common? Also, I assume there is some market pressure to consider, if your increases outpace supply and demand, then tenants would simply move, right?

Before Mountain View landed rent control a few years ago, my rent was being increased 10% year over year - I had enough after 3 years and moved to Sunnyvale where my rent was $50 more a month for an extra bedroom and 300-400 sqft extra.

Interestingly, my rent has remained stable ever since moving - guess it's possible to have much better luck with smaller landlords.

Re: California Approves Statewide Rent Control

#597

Post by AnthonyMouse »

jackvalentine wrote: post #586
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #546

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Impose relaxed zoning rules at the state level instead of imposing rent control there.

I would completely agree with that, but for some reason it isn't as politically do-able as this rent control legislation was.

> I would completely agree with that, but for some reason it isn't as politically do-able as this rent control legislation was.

The reason is that landlords know exactly what rent control does.

Landlords know that the tenants with the strongest interest in local housing costs are the people who already live there and plan to continue to do so indefinitely. Rent control is a method of buying them off without actually solving the problem in general, so that overall rents and housing costs remain high but the subset of people most likely to be politically active in doing something to correct that gets a bribe to stop objecting while overall housing costs continue to rise faster than inflation.

What it is, then, is not a step on the road to a real solution, it's a roadblock preventing that from happening by weakening opposition to the status quo by just enough that no actually effective reforms can be enacted.

Re: California Approves Statewide Rent Control

#598

Post by averros »

fountainofage wrote: post #451
inferiorhuman wrote: post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Housing in California is fixed because of zoning and construction regulations. And who decides these zoning laws? Typically cities and counties. Unfortunately Prop 13 has incentivized building out retail properties (sales tax revenue) over all else. So let's start by doing away with Prop. 13 protections for everything but primary residences. Then, change the statewide zoning laws to encourage/require available housin…

I mostly agree, but we should get rid of prop 13 completely. Just put a lien on the property rather than having the state seize the property if the "concern" is that we don't want people kicked out of their homes for property taxes.

Why do you hate pensioners who worked all their lives, paid off their mortgages, and paid for the roads and such you youngsters use for free?

Repealing Prop 13 will result in hundreds of thousands of old people being evicted from their homes. (Liens? Quite a lot of these same people sustain their living by reverse mortgages. Liens will destroy it.)

And techies are wondering why they're seen as a*les by those without fancy degrees. You only need to look in the mirror to see a prime example.

Re: California Approves Statewide Rent Control

#599

Post by slavik81 »

human20190310 wrote: post #377
ralusek wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's just not even talk about the fact that regulation is the reason why housing is scarce, let's just assume California is 100% at capacity. How the hell does rent control increase turnabout? It just let's people who got in at the right time have their status as a resident enforced indefinitely, when there are plenty of people who are willing and able to pay far more in order to live there.

It hurts the owners who would be receiving the wealthy newcomers' money. It doesn't solve anything directly, but it's an attack on the prosperity of the people who are maintaining artificial restrictions on new construction. A laissez-faire approach to both construction and rent would probably be a better option. But that's already not happening, and it's not going to happen without pressuring homeowners and landlord…

Getting back at owners for opposing new construction by instituting rent control is cutting off your nose to spite your face. Rent control adds even more people who have no financial incentive to reduce the cost of housing in their neighborhood, thus making new construction even more politically difficult.

Re: California Approves Statewide Rent Control

#600

Post by sgc »

AmericanChopper wrote: post #520
sgc wrote: post #503

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There are many lots that don't get built on because the cost of construction is higher than the value of the home once built. I have done the math on a number of such lots, and the permitting fees have been roughly the amount to tip the scales. Add to that the one year minimum build time due to at least 4-6 months of bureaucratic delays, and it just becomes unfeasible.
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