711–720 of 1001 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because shrinking the number of landlords shrinks the number of units available, raising rents, _hurting renters_.
are these vanishing landlord eating their properties or just throwing them into the sea
I'm shocked at the ideological fervor here and the fact that virtually no one seems to have looked at the details of the actual bill. This is nothing like the rent control ordinance in SF that has caused $3000 units to get stuck at $500 rents. That will never happen under this law. The allowable increases are so much higher than "normal" rent control laws that any given unit will catch up to market rates in a matter…
This has been tried in several countries, and it failed miserably. Rent control never worked. In Sweden you have to wait 20 years to get a flat with rent control. The only solution for the people is to increase the offer, how? by deregulating and allowing others to build more.
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…
Conveniently, SF doesn't allow new construction either.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not to mention a sudden, unexpected expense in a situation where renters are on a tight budget and likely don't have much or any savings.
That’s it. That’s all this is. The law is just regulating shitty behavior. But you always have those who say “well I can legally raise blah and if I don’t less money.” Well now they can’t. Good. We’ve made it slightly hard to be a major cunt.
...sort of. What actually happened was that lords meddled with the size of units. The dues for a plot of land may be fixed at 3 bushels of grain, but if you can make the bushel bigger you can pass a rent increase anyway. So a major concern of European peasant movements was stable and uniform units.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
are these vanishing landlord eating their properties or just throwing them into the sea
No, just leaving them vacant while the value increases.
[0] https://www.sfchronicle.com/realestate/article/An-estimated-...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This has been tried in several countries, and it failed miserably. Rent control never worked. In Sweden you have to wait 20 years to get a flat with rent control. The only solution for the people is to increase the offer, how? by deregulating and allowing others to build more.
But this is not what the new bill is about. It doesn't cap total costs, it allows 5% per year increase, it doesn't apply to new homes, etc.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because shrinking the number of landlords shrinks the number of units available, raising rents, _hurting renters_.
are these vanishing landlord eating their properties or just throwing them into the sea
But it doesn't work on the houses on top of the land. Because we can build more or less of them. Or higher.
I'm shocked at the ideological fervor here and the fact that virtually no one seems to have looked at the details of the actual bill. This is nothing like the rent control ordinance in SF that has caused $3000 units to get stuck at $500 rents. That will never happen under this law. The allowable increases are so much higher than "normal" rent control laws that any given unit will catch up to market rates in a matter…
Well said. It is weird to see so many people jumping out to lay the accusations of 'uninformed!', 'never works', etc... In fact, the CA, especially in bay area, the rent is already top among this country. 7% on top of that is still a quite sizable increase. And it is hilarious to see those (aspiring) landlords playing the blame-the-game-not-the-player rhetoric here to blame the government not allowing more houses to…
> Local ordinances that limit rent increases for some rental housing units, such as in New York and San Francisco, have had a positive impact over the past three decades on the amount and quality of broadly affordable rental housing in cities that have used them. [0]
The negative effects of price controls, especially when it comes to rents is the most unifying issue in economics. Rent control isn't a new idea, but there is agreement that it's a bad idea. It's not the landlords who say this, its the people who study this stuff. Paul Krugman wrote about this in 2000 [1].
Putting in arbitrary controls on prices to fight cost increases is about as effective as putting arbitrary controls on thermometers to fight global warming.
[0] http://www.igmchicago.org/surveys/rent-control
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2000/06/07/opinion/reckonings-a-rent...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This has been tried in several countries, and it failed miserably. Rent control never worked. In Sweden you have to wait 20 years to get a flat with rent control. The only solution for the people is to increase the offer, how? by deregulating and allowing others to build more.
But this is not what the new bill is about. It doesn't cap total costs, it allows 5% per year increase, it doesn't apply to new homes, etc.
If you tell everyone that you cannot increase more than 5% a year, this is used as a signal to all landlords to increase 5% a year. It's a coordination mechanism. And it helps hedge for years in which the market rent has increased by more than 5% and the landlord is unable to adjust. A commenter who is a landlord confirmed this as well.
And this will increase the incentive to build new homes. This could be good but new homes tend to be more expensive and serve the high end. Much like the median price of a new car is significantly higher than the median price of all cars on the market.
There are entire industries in New York that focus on buying units and converting them from rent stabilized/controlled to market rents through any means (direct payment, intimidation, legal, etc). To think this will somehow lower what people actually pay for housing is naive.