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0 pointsmacspoofing6y ago0 comments

>Rent control that simply smooths out price increases, and loses landlords perhaps a year of the new price during sudden spikes, is pretty innocuous.

Says who? You're just making things up now.

>they always have the option of not keeping up with market-rate increases. Not that I think anyone will take that option.

No you're just distorting words. Rent-control is a mandate. Saying it isn't a mandate because you can just drop the rent is dishonest. Why are you playing these word-games?

>The point isn't to "fix" the increase in price.

But that's what it does. You're capping what rent can be and your only argument that somehow it isn't rent-control and won't suffer the same consequence as every rent-control policy is that isn't as disastrous as something that San Francisco did.

>But enough do to create a serious public policy problem

Serious public policy problem? What are you even talking about? Housing shortage and homelessness is a serious public policy problem. This is a non-problem that if solved through this measure actually magnifies those real issues.

You're also making up the reason why this policy was put in place. It was put in place "to deal with housing crunch"[1], and not deal with the 'serious public policy problem' of some fictional landlord spiking rent for fictional renters. We know from hundreds of studies that rent-control does not actually solve either problem..

[1]https://www.reuters.com/article/us-california-rent/californi...

0 comments

azernik6y ago

The essential feature of this bill is that the rate of increase allowed is well above long-term market trends. This is qualitatively different from a rent control policy that aims to keep rents perpetually below market rate.

The "housing crunch" is a very general term; the specific symptom addressed by this bill is drastic increases of rent on, for example, a change of ownership of a building. See https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2019-09-05/how-cali..., which has actual references to advocates of the bill.

> Supporters of the measure have pitched it as a way to prevent sudden increases in rents at levels that could drive people from their homes as the state experiences a surge in housing costs.

Assembly members in favor of the bill talked about "providing certainty", not about keeping prices low.

Also "some fictional landlord spiking rent for fictional renters"? The article I linked describes sudden increases to rents during changes in local housing markets:

> In Boyle Heights, apartments without rent controls saw rents increase from a median $1,200 a month to $1,700 between 2016 and 2017.

The OP references this area:

> Sandra Zamora, a 27-year-old preschool teacher, lives in a one-bedroom apartment in Menlo Park, Calif., a short drive from Facebook’s expanding headquarters. A year ago, Ms. Zamora’s building got a new owner, and the rent jumped to $1,900 from $1,100, a rise of over 70 percent. Most of her neighbors left. Ms. Zamora stayed, adding a roommate to the 600-square-foot space and taking a weekend job as a barista.

This rent control bill would force the new owner to spread that increase over several years.

macspoofingOP6y ago

>The "housing crunch" is a very general term; the specific symptom addressed by this bill is drastic increases of rent on

Right ... except the bill aggravates the "housing crunch". Again, you're trying to solve a small problem by magnifying the major cause of the problem you're trying to solve.

Your linked articled quotes an economists who says this will hurt people who "are upwardly mobile, striving families who are middle-income or lower-income in Irvine, who can’t afford to buy a house but where renting might be in their reach,", because:

1) "landlords who might have held rents for existing tenants at below-market rates with the knowledge they could increase them at any time might decide to hike rents every year."

2) "restrictions on rent hikes encourage owners to convert their apartments into condominiums, which removes properties from rental stock"

So, this policy makes rent broadly more expensive, and it lowers housing supply - which makes rent more expensive. Come on man.

What if you California introduced legislation that targeted the underlying cause of the rent spike ... i.e. the 'housing crunch'. This way, you can solve both problems, the housing crunch and rental spikes.

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