5 ms·

I agree that at this point rent control is a good option. Housing prices are going up so fast that rents need to go up too. The higher rents then give an incent

I agree that at this point rent control is a good option. Housing prices are going up so fast that rents need to go up too. The higher rents then give an incentive for house prices to go up. It becomes a cycle for both to increase. But rent control by itself is not enough. The other leg of the solution is to increase housing via governmental incentives. Otherwise, rent control will make the situation worse since there is no incentive to increase housing.

olliej 7y ago
The problem is that increasing rent has no restraint in CA. When a landlord increases rent by X% they are saying that the value of the property has increased by X%. Unfortunately businesses and landlords got together to push (and pass) prop 13 which amended the CA constitution to prevent assessed property value from increasing at more than 2% per year. That means any time a landlord increases rent by more than 2% they are benefiting from incorrect taxable valuation. Because property taxes cover the infrastructure that supports homes + buildings (the roads, police, firefighters, teachers, etc) they are directly offloading the costs of those services onto people who don't own property: The people who don't own property then have to (in addition to insane rent increases) pay higher income taxes, in order to support those services the are functionally there to benefit the undertaxed properties.
- refurb 7y ago
  The cost of being a landlord is much more than just property taxes.