4 ms·

Rent control is not a solution. Build more housing.

nostrademons 8y ago
That was a part of yonran's proposal: offer the developer increased density (upzoning) in exchange for rent-controlled apartments in addition to the townhomes. It's a win-win-win-win all around: the developer gets to sell more units (for more profit), the existing tenants get to maintain their rent control (in exchange for disruption while their old building is demolished and rebuilt), new homeowners get additional supply of housing, and the city doesn't have to deal with the protests of any of these groups.
- cycrutchfield 8y ago
  ... or just build enough new housing without having to introduce market-distorting artificial price controls
  - xnyan 8y ago
    Agree 100%, but people need to move into places today and tomorrow and I get that rent control is not a long term solution, but in the long term we are all dead as the saying goes. When more housing exists, rent control can end. In the mean time, I pick market distortion over people out on their ass do to impossibly high rent.
    - fossuser 8y ago
      Tricky part of this is rent control adds an entire new group that no longer cares about housing being built and is interested in the status quo (as well as making it less attractive to build new housing and rent it out). I suspect if you put it in place it becomes politically impossible to end and even harder to build new housing.
      - wahern 8y ago
        It is in place and it's being torn down, so....
        fossuser 8y ago
        Yeah, torn down to make units to sell (which makes sense given the incentives).
      - xnyan 8y ago
        I suppose I don't agree with the premise of your argument. Economic and market forces are only a part of the political decision making process, poor investments and low public good projects are pursued all the time as well as many good projects. Getting things done in politics is about political will, organization, sacrifice and being determined to accomplish a cause, not really much to do with how good or bad of an idea it is. The economic costs of rent control are real, but distributed and I think its difficult to make people resonate with that. I don't think it would have a significant effect on the viability of other projects one way or another.
        fossuser 8y ago
        I think you're being unfairly downvoted for disagreeing with me. I generally agree with you, but would argue that in this case evidence suggests that building housing in the bay area is extremely difficult given the local government situation and how it leads to all local areas incentivized to not allow development while the larger group as a whole would benefit from it. This is why I tend to think the only way to fix this is at a higher level (like SB827) where you can avoid some of these affects by coordinating for the entire state. I understand that this doesn't solve the issue of long term residents who can't afford current rent so I think reasonable people can disagree about this issue. I just tend to think that the negative affects of rent control outweigh that benefit. The negatives being: - Creating a bimodal market where new comers have even more extreme rents to subsidize the rent controlled units - Landlords incentivized to do the absolute minimum maintenance because they want their tenants to move out so they can increase rent to market rates. - Developers less interested in building units if renting them will be market controlled and ROI is less certain. - People living in rent controlled units caring less about housing getting built. Rent control seems to only help existing tenants - with high levels of immigration to the state it probably causes more problems overall. I agree with your point that it's about political will, but I think rent control reduces some of that support for building housing (and creates a large contingent extremely in favor of never removing rent control).
vkou 8y ago
Rent control is a solution that won't immediately leave tens of thousands people homeless until said housing can be built. Unless you wouldn't mind them crashing on your couch, in the meantime, that is.
sthu11182 8y ago
I agree. I live in Mountain View and all for building more density and more townhouses, but the number of townhouses in the articles is less then the number of apartments in each of the new developments. Unless I am missing something, I don't understand how decreasing the number of housing units is helping the area.
derekdahmer 8y ago
I agree but they didn't build more housing either, they replaced 20 units with 15 and 59 with 55.
imtringued 8y ago
Rent control just delays the inevitable until things mentioned in the article happen. The rent is frozen but the value of the property keeps rising. Landlords increase rent of vacant units to make up the loss of rent revenue. Everyone is happy until one day the tenant moves or is forced out (see the article). Then the price of the property immediately shoots up to market rate and you end up with a price that is higher than without rent control.
Gibbon1 8y ago
Solution is to force wall street and the tech bro's to move their money laundering operations elsewhere.

That was a part of yonran's proposal: offer the developer increased density (upzoning) in exchange for rent-controlled apartments in addition to the townhomes. It's a win-win-win-win all around: the developer gets to sell more units (for more profit), the existing tenants get to maintain their rent control (in exchange for disruption while their old building is demolished and rebuilt), new homeowners get additional supply of housing, and the city doesn't have to deal with the protests of any of these groups.

cycrutchfield 8y ago
... or just build enough new housing without having to introduce market-distorting artificial price controls
- xnyan 8y ago
  Agree 100%, but people need to move into places today and tomorrow and I get that rent control is not a long term solution, but in the long term we are all dead as the saying goes. When more housing exists, rent control can end. In the mean time, I pick market distortion over people out on their ass do to impossibly high rent.
  - fossuser 8y ago
    Tricky part of this is rent control adds an entire new group that no longer cares about housing being built and is interested in the status quo (as well as making it less attractive to build new housing and rent it out). I suspect if you put it in place it becomes politically impossible to end and even harder to build new housing.
    - wahern 8y ago
      It is in place and it's being torn down, so....
      - fossuser 8y ago
        Yeah, torn down to make units to sell (which makes sense given the incentives).
    - xnyan 8y ago
      I suppose I don't agree with the premise of your argument. Economic and market forces are only a part of the political decision making process, poor investments and low public good projects are pursued all the time as well as many good projects. Getting things done in politics is about political will, organization, sacrifice and being determined to accomplish a cause, not really much to do with how good or bad of an idea it is. The economic costs of rent control are real, but distributed and I think its difficult to make people resonate with that. I don't think it would have a significant effect on the viability of other projects one way or another.
      - fossuser 8y ago
        I think you're being unfairly downvoted for disagreeing with me. I generally agree with you, but would argue that in this case evidence suggests that building housing in the bay area is extremely difficult given the local government situation and how it leads to all local areas incentivized to not allow development while the larger group as a whole would benefit from it. This is why I tend to think the only way to fix this is at a higher level (like SB827) where you can avoid some of these affects by coordinating for the entire state. I understand that this doesn't solve the issue of long term residents who can't afford current rent so I think reasonable people can disagree about this issue. I just tend to think that the negative affects of rent control outweigh that benefit. The negatives being: - Creating a bimodal market where new comers have even more extreme rents to subsidize the rent controlled units - Landlords incentivized to do the absolute minimum maintenance because they want their tenants to move out so they can increase rent to market rates. - Developers less interested in building units if renting them will be market controlled and ROI is less certain. - People living in rent controlled units caring less about housing getting built. Rent control seems to only help existing tenants - with high levels of immigration to the state it probably causes more problems overall. I agree with your point that it's about political will, but I think rent control reduces some of that support for building housing (and creates a large contingent extremely in favor of never removing rent control).

vkou 8y ago

Rent control is a solution that won't immediately leave tens of thousands people homeless until said housing can be built. Unless you wouldn't mind them crashing on your couch, in the meantime, that is.

sthu11182 8y ago

I agree. I live in Mountain View and all for building more density and more townhouses, but the number of townhouses in the articles is less then the number of apartments in each of the new developments. Unless I am missing something, I don't understand how decreasing the number of housing units is helping the area.

derekdahmer 8y ago

I agree but they didn't build more housing either, they replaced 20 units with 15 and 59 with 55.

imtringued 8y ago

Rent control just delays the inevitable until things mentioned in the article happen. The rent is frozen but the value of the property keeps rising. Landlords increase rent of vacant units to make up the loss of rent revenue. Everyone is happy until one day the tenant moves or is forced out (see the article). Then the price of the property immediately shoots up to market rate and you end up with a price that is higher than without rent control.

Gibbon1 8y ago

Solution is to force wall street and the tech bro's to move their money laundering operations elsewhere.