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California Approves Statewide Rent Control

nytimes.com

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Re: California Approves Statewide Rent Control

#931

Post by paulddraper »

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…

Makes sense.

This is the use-it-or-lose-it budget game, landlord style.

Re: California Approves Statewide Rent Control

#932

Post by anigbrowl »

dgzl wrote: post #651
anigbrowl wrote: post #605

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. You know I was neutral on this stuff, studied economics and some bu…

I'm not following you... What did you believe, and what has it changed to?

I believed in giving market economics and the investor class the benefit of the doubt and now I don't. You can interpret this in the context of the larger discussion and the news to which it is a reaction.

Re: California Approves Statewide Rent Control

#933

Post by namesbc »

rconti wrote: post #914
namesbc wrote: post #663

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bay Area has more jobs than it does housing for the people who work those jobs. There just isn't an option for everyone to move away from the bay area and still have work. Take your "I've got mine so screw everyone else" attitude out of the bay area, we don't have room here for people with so little empathy for their neighbors.

It's a fair comment. You entirely brushed aside point 3 by using a personal criticism on the parent poster to ignore the fact that rent control is imposing a cost on an entire massive state, in order to regulate a thing that is an issue in a small number of counties.

Every tenant, regardless of what county they live in, needs basic protections for their home.

This law is not targeted at SF per-se because SF already has strong rental protections, this law offers the bare minimum of protection for everyone in the state. The bay area should, and must, pass stronger protections than this statewide law.

Re: California Approves Statewide Rent Control

#934

Post by thebradbain »

ericmay wrote: post #889
silexia wrote: post #878

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is really bad policy... Treating the symptom while making the root problem worse. The core issue is there is not enough good housing for everyone in California. The real solution is to greatly loosen building regulation and make getting permits much faster and easier statewide. Then entrepreneurs will double or triple the housing supply and drop the costs of renting or buying a home by 80%. You could see rents g…

I would argue the core issue is actually overpopulation (or in the case of California too many people wanting to live there but also trying to balance preservation of Nature). And it's certainly much more acute in California. Tokyo is not a desirable way to live, but neither are the suburbs. Too many people means the density gets too high, and poor zoning regulation and poor building incentives get us mcmansions. Eve…

Counterpoint: Paris is denser than Tokyo (by almost a factor of 3! 21k persons/km for Paris vs 7k persons/km for Tokyo, only a little higher than NYC). While I’ve never heard Tokyo referred to as “undesirable” (though I have heard “crowded”) in the first place, to say Paris is “undesirable” is to objectively fly in the face of mass media and popular perception of society’s regard for the “city of love”

Density does not automatically mean low quality of life, and in fact could just as easily enhance it: what matters is good city planning and design, and I’d very much argue that in e.g. LA (where I live) the vast majority of single family homes in the city are in areas where it makes no sense for them to be, lowering the quality of life for even those that own and live in the home (e.g. single family homes right next to highways and commercial corridors? why?)

In my opinion, the idea that California is “full” is immensely dangerous. Especially considering the fact that SF and LA are losing net population yearly — and yet the rents are still increasing and our suburbs are still sprawling further and further out. Density is the solution, not sprawl and not limiting who can come here.

Re: California Approves Statewide Rent Control

#935

Post by fountainofage »

zepto wrote: post #918
fountainofage wrote: post #859

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Sure but you also want to force anyone who has recently managed to buy a home and doesn’t have a huge extra income out of it and out of the area. Your landlord may be able to evict one building’s worth of people, but your goal is to evict many more than that. Your landlord is harmless by comparison.

Who said eviction? I said to charge to the property tax as it's valued today. Put a lien on the property and collect at time of transfer. There's no reason to evict people based on property taxes. Texas handles this just fine.

Re: California Approves Statewide Rent Control

#936

Post by mratzloff »

nostrebored wrote: post #676
mratzloff wrote: post #664

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.

What are you talking about... One of the nicest things about being a renter is being able to choose to live in a place where you can get those savings.

Spoken as if many people have a true choice about whether or not to rent.

Re: California Approves Statewide Rent Control

#937

Post by xvector »

seph-reed wrote: post #890
xvector wrote: post #806

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really dislike the fact that I’d have to save for decades just to afford a decent house in California. The land isn’t doing anything just sitting there. I am totally fine with clearing it out so people can actually afford houses.

Coming from CA and living elsewhere now, it honestly hurts me how much people take that land for granted. It's so damn gorgeous and rare.

It is definitely stunning, and it can make a painful commute bearable, but I would put the needs of my fellow humans over aesthetic.

That said, there is still a ton of "boring" land we can build on first before cannibalizing the scenic drives.

Re: California Approves Statewide Rent Control

#938

Post by mikeash »

Symmetry wrote: post #847
mikeash wrote: post #813

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lack of supply is a problem, but is it caused by an inability to turn a profit? It seems like developers have no trouble making money from new construction. The difficult part, and the part that limits supply, is getting permission to build.

They aren't unrelated. The more hoops a developer has to jump through to get permission to build anything the more outside returns are required to get people to push to do that. The people who thrive in this environment aren't the most ethical of business people and you'd get more ethical developers if there were clear rules allowing certain things to be built and less outsized returns. But better that than nothing g…

You’re totally right. It just looks like the current situation in places like SF is almost entirely due to difficulty in getting permission. Remove rent control entirely and the supply wouldn’t increase much. It’s different in various other places.

Re: California Approves Statewide Rent Control

#939

Post by cybersnowflake »

namesbc wrote: post #663
cybersnowflake wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also 2. Realize that not everybody in the world needs to or should live in the Bay Area/Hollywood. 3. Don't pass statewide laws catering primarily to the group of people aspiring to do so.

Bay Area has more jobs than it does housing for the people who work those jobs. There just isn't an option for everyone to move away from the bay area and still have work. Take your "I've got mine so screw everyone else" attitude out of the bay area, we don't have room here for people with so little empathy for their neighbors.

"There just isn't an option for everyone to move away from the bay area and still have work."

>>>>>>>>>

If you can't afford to live in a box in San Jose, obviously staying isn't an option either.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

"Take your "I've got mine so screw everyone else" attitude out of the bay area, we don't have room here for people with so little empathy for their neighbors."

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Oh I don't live in the Bay Area. Theres an entire nation outside of San Francisco, large parts of which are better than the bay area in every objective fashion other than this weird cult obsession with having to live in the poop filled streets of Silicon Valley.

Re: California Approves Statewide Rent Control

#940

Post by macspoofing »

azernik wrote: post #824
macspoofing wrote: post #705

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is still rent control. The problems you see will not be fixed by the law. >I think one could sanely argue that allowing increases of up to 5% plus inflation is a suitable restrictio Based on what data? And no, it's not a 'sane' argument: 1) if 5% + inflation is above market rates then this rent control is either a no-op or detrimental because it may incentivize landlords to hike rent to maximum because they won't…

> 1) if 5% + inflation is above market rates then this rent control is either a no-op or detrimental because it may incentivize landlords to hike rent to maximum because they won't have have the flexibility to do that in the future if the market changes. It incentivizes landlords to even out their rent increases over time, and to avoid sudden jumps. Especially for lower-income people, price shocks are devastating ; h…

>It incentivizes landlords to even out their rent increases over time, and to avoid sudden jumps.

No. It doesn't 'incentivize', it mandates.

Also, I have no idea why you're arguing this point, this is rent-control. This is how rent-control works. It sets a cap on what you can charge for rent.

>Especially for lower-income people, price shocks are devastating;

Rent-control is devastating for lower-income people.

Price shocks are a result of spirling supply in face of rising demand. THIS DOES NOT FIX THAT. Rent control does not fix this problem and you can't just wish it away. Rent control makes it worse. In a normal market, prices stabilize. Landlords don't just spike prices over a month because either a) there's a lease agreement which sets these terms out, b) they won't be able to rent the unit out at the higher prices, or c) Good tenants are hard to find and finding tenants takes time and is expensive while your apartment sits there not generating income.

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