4 ms·

The people driven out get to keep the money from their property appreciating, it's not like they were kicked out for nothing. Also, an increase in housing value

by slackingoff2017 9y ago

The people driven out get to keep the money from their property appreciating, it's not like they were kicked out for nothing. Also, an increase in housing values is proportional to the worth of the house so even rich people are affected. Your vision of old widows on the streets doesn't match reality. Most of the bubble is because of rent control aka prop 13. There's plenty of research showing that artificially limiting rent on part of the housing stock squeezes the price on the remaining units and causes the rent controlled units to never appear on the market. Look at data on NYC for an extreme example of this. In NYC around half the housing is rent controlled and a tenant stays for over twenty years on average. These units pay roughly a third of the rate of a non rent controlled apartment. In non-rent-controlled apartments the cost is over the three times as high and the average person stays for less than two years. In NYC these units have been rent controlled for so long that most have passed down from the original owner. However, they still only tend to be sold upon death because renting them out illegally is incredibly lucrative, often enough that the owner can live off of the proceeds. So yeah rent control effectively removes that part of housing stock from the market permanently. It's too hard to prevent people from profiting off their rent controlled units so it just results in a racket.

dv_dt 9y ago
> The people driven out get to keep the money from their property appreciating, it's not like they were kicked out for nothing. Soo, get out of this neighborhood and move someplace poorer to make room for people who can afford it? I still think that's pretty ugly when talking about people's homes. When you're talking about people with fixed incomes, the only option after getting kicked out is to move someplace lower cost... I don't understand the rent control discussion - there was a reason I differentiate between primary residence owners and commercial rent investments, especially the intergenerational costs. I don't think prop 13 lets you make any transfers of ownership without resetting the tax assement. (I could be wrong here...)
- slackingoff2017 9y ago
  The primary residence owners get the same perverse incentive to illegally rent and never sell the property. Why wouldn't they? It's literally free money. And transfers don't need to happen when the average person lives 80 years. These units will largely be kept off the market for over thirty years. I understand your concern about long time residents being forced out, but the proper solution to this is not locking out large portions of the housing market. A much better solution is to highly encourage new and higher density housing to make the area more affordable to everyone. Existing residents don't deserve to live in SF more than new ones just because theyve been there longer
  - dv_dt 9y ago
    I think it's odd to base your policy for most people for what a tiny minority might illegally do. As for people keeping their homes for thirty years - I think that is a tremendous good in our society that we want to encourage in terms of stability of people and their relationships to their neighbors and cities, and suspect we're going to hit a fundamental disagreement beyond there.
    - woah 9y ago
      It sounds nice, but in California it has created a landed gentry who fight tooth and nail to keep things completely unaffordable for everyone else.
  - jfoutz 9y ago
    What about enforcing the laws about illegal renting? Turn the property over to the current tenants, perhaps fine the prior owner and call it a day.
  - algesten 9y ago
    > Existing residents don't deserve to live in SF more than new ones just because theyve been there longer Yes, of course they do. It's people's _homes_ we're talking about. And it's absolutely in every society's interest to safe guard a mix of people everywhere. Rampant gentrification where the moneyed upper and middle classes squeeze out the lower class, is clearly the number one reason for an increasing segregated society, disenfranchisement and alienation. Perfect growing grounds for radicalisation and what follows...
- nerfhammer 9y ago
  Why does everyone that already has a certain kind of lease deserve cheap rent for life but not people that don't already have a certain kind of lease?

dv_dt 9y ago

> The people driven out get to keep the money from their property appreciating, it's not like they were kicked out for nothing. Soo, get out of this neighborhood and move someplace poorer to make room for people who can afford it? I still think that's pretty ugly when talking about people's homes. When you're talking about people with fixed incomes, the only option after getting kicked out is to move someplace lower cost... I don't understand the rent control discussion - there was a reason I differentiate between primary residence owners and commercial rent investments, especially the intergenerational costs. I don't think prop 13 lets you make any transfers of ownership without resetting the tax assement. (I could be wrong here...)

slackingoff2017 9y ago
The primary residence owners get the same perverse incentive to illegally rent and never sell the property. Why wouldn't they? It's literally free money. And transfers don't need to happen when the average person lives 80 years. These units will largely be kept off the market for over thirty years. I understand your concern about long time residents being forced out, but the proper solution to this is not locking out large portions of the housing market. A much better solution is to highly encourage new and higher density housing to make the area more affordable to everyone. Existing residents don't deserve to live in SF more than new ones just because theyve been there longer
- dv_dt 9y ago
  I think it's odd to base your policy for most people for what a tiny minority might illegally do. As for people keeping their homes for thirty years - I think that is a tremendous good in our society that we want to encourage in terms of stability of people and their relationships to their neighbors and cities, and suspect we're going to hit a fundamental disagreement beyond there.
  - woah 9y ago
    It sounds nice, but in California it has created a landed gentry who fight tooth and nail to keep things completely unaffordable for everyone else.
- jfoutz 9y ago
  What about enforcing the laws about illegal renting? Turn the property over to the current tenants, perhaps fine the prior owner and call it a day.
- algesten 9y ago
  > Existing residents don't deserve to live in SF more than new ones just because theyve been there longer Yes, of course they do. It's people's _homes_ we're talking about. And it's absolutely in every society's interest to safe guard a mix of people everywhere. Rampant gentrification where the moneyed upper and middle classes squeeze out the lower class, is clearly the number one reason for an increasing segregated society, disenfranchisement and alienation. Perfect growing grounds for radicalisation and what follows...
nerfhammer 9y ago
Why does everyone that already has a certain kind of lease deserve cheap rent for life but not people that don't already have a certain kind of lease?