3 ms·
> Unfortunately, rent control will have the opposite effect of what Oregon thinks, and only make housing scarcity worse. I agree in general, but Oregon's law o
by creato 7y ago
> Unfortunately, rent control will have the opposite effect of what Oregon thinks, and only make housing scarcity worse.
I agree in general, but Oregon's law only limits increases to 7% per year. In the long run, that should easily be enough to keep up with inflation, even in a hot market. If San Francisco's law were 7% and not 1-2%, I doubt it would be nearly as much of an issue as it is today (where you have people with rents effectively from decades ago, because that isn't enough to keep up with the market).
The 7% limit seems designed to limit extreme short term increases, but still allow rents to reflect market value in the long term. I think this is a politically smart strategy, without the long term damage of holding rents below market value.
edit: and combined with the zoning changes... I'd say the open market approach to managing housing supply and demand came out way ahead with this law.
- RussianCow 7y agoSmall nitpick, but the actual cap seems higher than 7%: > The resulting legislation would cap rents statewide at 7% annually plus inflation Which, if I'm reading that correctly, would put the real cap closer to 9-10%. I don't have a strong opinion about this, but a 10% cap on rent increases seems reasonable to me, keeping in mind that this only applies to existing tenants—if the tenant leaves, you can increase rent by however much you want. This seems like a fair way to help reduce the number of people that are priced out of their homes, without significantly impacting landlords. That said, I'm personally more excited about the zoning changes; single-family zoning was never a good idea IMO, and it's great to see Oregon slowly moving away from that.