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California Approves Statewide Rent Control

nytimes.com

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Re: California Approves Statewide Rent Control

#91

Post by tracker1 »

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, you're saying people shouldn't be able to own apartment buildings? That will really help housing in dense areas.

Re: California Approves Statewide Rent Control

#92

Post by quixoticelixer- »

thaumaturgy wrote: post #83

HN: According to the simple laws of supply and demand, housing prices would go down if we just increased supply to meet demand. Also HN: These rent controls are just going to make the housing problem in this state even worse. I don't get it. If the situation were really as simple as the first statement implies, then if this particular law was really going to have a catastrophic effect on housing, that would just mean…

Rent control decreases the supply of housing

Re: California Approves Statewide Rent Control

#93

Post by Litmus2336 »

thaumaturgy wrote: post #83

HN: According to the simple laws of supply and demand, housing prices would go down if we just increased supply to meet demand. Also HN: These rent controls are just going to make the housing problem in this state even worse. I don't get it. If the situation were really as simple as the first statement implies, then if this particular law was really going to have a catastrophic effect on housing, that would just mean…

I think you're intentionally misrepresenting the opposing viewpoint. If rent control artificially reduces the price of housing, more people will want to live in CA. Less houses will be built, as less profit is being made. Therefore, prices will be lower for those already housed, yet more people will be unable to purchase a home.

Of course the million dollar question is how many less units will be built if they're less profitable, and how many people will be enticed to move or stay in CA because of rent controls.

Re: California Approves Statewide Rent Control

#94

Post by decebalus1 »

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 real solution to a housing problem is to incentivize and facilitate the building of more housing.

You need to have some degree of control. I live in a suburb close to a tech hub in WA. They built a lot of housing in the past 3 years. And I mean a lot. At least a couple of hundred of apartments on the market every year, after raising 3-4 buildings at the same time, in a town of 20k people.

One would think that the price would go down based on supply and demand, right? More than half of the apartments were empty while the management companies were not budging on the price. Nobody wanted to go below 2k/month for a one bedroom and they were sitting around with empty apartments. Finally they managed to reel in some suckers by offering 2-3 months free rent but again, no rent was going below 2k so the next year, you pay up or move out.

Right now, people are moving out and the apartment buildings aren't what you'd call full but again, the rent is not going down. It actually increased. Because what happens is that they're owned by large landlord corporations which can take the hit for a year or two to keep the prices up. I know this because I used to live in one. They increased my rent (years ago) from 1.2k to 1.7k and I moved out. The apartment was on the market afterwards for about a year and they didn't try too hard to get new tenants, they just posted it periodically on Craigslist. I tried to negotiate to bring it down to 1.4k and they said no. It was way profitable for anyone to keep the price up, although they lost a year of rent from it.

Re: California Approves Statewide Rent Control

#95

Post by 52-6F-62 »

pitaj wrote: post #35
tmh79 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Limiting rent increases to max 8% (what this bill encodes) is only going to affect maybe 1-3% of lease agreements annually. This isn't about vast controls of housing stock, it about limiting 20% rent spikes people experience.

At the cost of further disincentives to actually building more housing. What a great idea. Every field of economics agrees that rent control causes harm to the people it's supposed to help.

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...

Re: California Approves Statewide Rent Control

#96

Post by mc32 »

munk-a wrote: post #82
mc32 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Sorry, to clarify... Are you saying that because we have public transit no one can own cars anymore? The generous way to read the post above is an arrangement where property ownership can be both public and private - possibly where rental units are majority state owned and private ownership is more concentrated in actual residents.

>” ...real solution to the housing crises is the abolishment of professional landlords... Why [] support a system where people can own many properties[...] Treating housing as an investment vehicle is fundamentally incompatible...

It’s akin to saying most transit should be gov owned: cars, trucks, trains, planes, ships... they may allow you to own one private vehicle.

Re: California Approves Statewide Rent Control

#97

Post by olliej »

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.

Obviously, but part of that is having your property taxed at those market rates, businesses and landlords got together to pass an amendment to the CA constitution that prohibits any part of CA from increasing the assessed value of your property at more than 2%.

You can't have it both ways: saying you should have free reign in determining the value of your property, while also claiming the government can't tax you according to that value.

Re: California Approves Statewide Rent Control

#98

Post by tolmasky »

joshAg wrote: post #73
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 entire point of the law is to prevent you from being able to make those larger adjustments, though. How often do you replace tenants? And what's your occupancy rate? If you're in a situation where you can reliably raise rent 7% YoY indefinitely without decreasing your occupancy rate, then you were severely underpriced for the market (and you should probably fire that management company for pricing you that absurd…

What in your second paragraph doesn’t apply without rent control? In other words, what makes 7% the magic number? Your entire argument seems based on market forces (if you raise too much, your tenant leaves and if there’s no wealthy people to replace them, you're stuck). How is this not the case without rent control? Do wealthy tenants somehow appear without rent control?

Re: California Approves Statewide Rent Control

#99

Post by driverdan »

baby wrote: post #34
bgorman wrote: post #27

One thing I have noticed as I have become more aware is that many of our laws are aimed at trying to freeze a moment of time, often by piling on contradictory policies on top of each other. Subsidize home loans Ban new construction Ban rent increases It is no wonder why housing prices/rents continue to rise in these markets. In software engineering sometimes conclude that a rewrite is necessary. How can we completely…

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

If that's what demand has done to pricing then yes. Where are rents increasing 100% per year?

Re: California Approves Statewide Rent Control

#100

Post by ProfessorLayton »

cryptoz wrote: post #45
pitaj wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rent control deters the building of more housing. It's literally part of the problem.

Can you explain what you mean? I don't follow. Rent control is a bandaid that provides a level of stability to the lower classes. They can live without daily anxiety of being rudely defacto 'evicted' by radical, surprise rent increases. This enables a society to continue to grow and function at a somewhat more sustainable pace, letting cities and counties grow without intense boom-bust and crash cycles, with a more s…

Rent control does indeed make the housing shortage worse in the following ways:

- It makes it so new renters subsidize the old ones, raising prices for newly vacant places, defeating the purpose of controlling costs. It also doesn't offer tons of protection from boom/bust cycles, as mainly those riding the boom will be able to afford absurd prices in highly regulated places like SF — Where a 1br can fetch 3.7k/mo (!!)

- "FU, got mine" attitude disengages renters from organizing the same way NIMBY homeowners do. For example, SF renters could easily outnumber homeowners to allow much more housing to be built, but ~70% of housing stock there falls under rent control.

I do want to be clear that I fully support controlling costs in some manner, however, this desperately needs to be tied to a solution that results in more housing.

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