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California Approves Statewide Rent Control

nytimes.com

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Re: California Approves Statewide Rent Control

#851

Post by AnthonyMouse »

sgc wrote: post #812
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #597

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Hanlon's rasor: Some idiot naively thought up this legislation and a bunch of people voted it in because it sounded "good". This was most probably brought into being by a bunch of bumbling fools trying to do good without due diligence rather than by a cabal of elite landowners.

It's hardly ever a cabal or some group of elites conspiring in a smoke filled room. Landlords in general know that people are clamoring for something to be done about housing costs, most of them know that easing supply restrictions would be more effective in actually lowering rents than rent control, so they each on average fight hard against the actual solution and less hard against the ineffective one. Then the ineffective one is the one that passes.

It's the sort of false compromise that happens in politics all the time. Instead of solving the problem, you enact some alleged solution that really does nothing or makes the problem worse, but then politicians get to go tell the voters that they've done something. Then, when it doesn't work, they get to go back and pass another ineffective bill to "solve" it again in the next election cycle, meanwhile we get another four years of young people not being able to afford housing.

Re: California Approves Statewide Rent Control

#852

Post by solidsnack9000 »

Rapzid wrote: post #549
dgzl wrote: post #259

I'm a renter in Oregon and I've been outspoken about this long before the laws were passed. From my experience, people who support heavy laws, regulations and taxes don't spend enough time considering potential side effects. They feel like with enough support, they can just force anything they want to happen, while completely disregarding the market. I feel like an amount of the general public just wants Big Daddy go…

What constitutes a natural framework? IMHO, there is nothing "natural" about land ownership. Land ownership in the USA isn't actually what most people think it is. It's not an inalienable right and is largely at the pleasure of the public by way of legislation that can be changed.

The natural framework of relevance is more to do with housing as a good or service than with land.

Re: California Approves Statewide Rent Control

#853

Post by falsedan »

macspoofing wrote: post #707
falsedan wrote: post #703

Earlier quoted context omitted.

are these vanishing landlord eating their properties or just throwing them into the sea

No. They let population growth take care of that while they decide not to invest in rental properties. Your flippant argument can be flipped around too. If there is a housing shortage, by what mechanism does rent control conjure new housing units?

who the what now

my point is, vanishing landlord or no, the units remain

Re: California Approves Statewide Rent Control

#854

Post by cryptonector »

amahani wrote: post #152
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…

You are absolutely correct: rent control (1) increases upward pressure, and (2) decreases rental supplies (and therefore drives up the price of rent) , and (3) benefits high-income earners when not coupled with income limits. (1) Since rent control laws put limits on increases (and not decreases) every landlord understands that he/she should test the upper boundary at all times to avoid renting severly below market r…

Another thing to consider is that rent control can depress interest in building more housing units. Why build if you won't be able to make the profit you'd expect due to price controls? More generally, this is an effect of price controls, especially those that can't easily be worked around.

Re: California Approves Statewide Rent Control

#855

Post by tathougies »

abalone wrote: post #593
jlebar wrote: post #576

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Oh really? I didnt realize it was the petroleum companies who forced people to buy petroleum and not the fact that fossil fuel based transit and energy is technologically superior and easier than any alternative.

Re: California Approves Statewide Rent Control

#857

Post by AnthonyMouse »

jackvalentine wrote: post #621
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #597

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

So how would you solve the root cause?

The policy solution is known -- ease restrictions on increasing the housing supply.

If you're asking how to get that passed, well, that's an education problem. You need people to understand why rent control is not a solution so that they are not willing to accept it over something that actually works.

Re: California Approves Statewide Rent Control

#858

Post by cryptonector »

briffle wrote: post #658
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…

The Hilarious thing in Oregon is some of the 'marketing' for this new rent control law stressed over and over that rent had grown 25% in Oregon over the last 4 years, so 'something needed to be done'. So they capped at 7% per year.. Someone really, really sucks at math...

Yes: the people targeted by those ads. "Look! We did something for you! Vote for us!"

Re: California Approves Statewide Rent Control

#859

Post by fountainofage »

KibbutzDalia wrote: post #624
fountainofage wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, what you do is get rid of prop 13 and do yearly appraisals. Then you just tax the property on what it's worth, and if a landlord refuses to rent, then the tax is now a vacancy tax. The real problem is we're not taxing these properties at the true value they could provide to society, so a massive market inefficiency exists.

You are pure evil.

My landlord's building is worth $5 million ($5,000k) and he pays $3k a year in property taxes. He can evict all tenants and wait for someone to pay him $10 million for the property. He can wait for generations and never pay more than $4k a year because of how prop 13 is structured.

But you do you.

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