4 ms·
When you mess with supply and demand there are always unintended consequences. I'm currently a beneficiary of rent control and am lucky to be paying below-marke
by joshfraser 7y ago
When you mess with supply and demand there are always unintended consequences. I'm currently a beneficiary of rent control and am lucky to be paying below-market rate for my apartment. It would be nice to move to another neighborhood, but it would be dumb for me to give up the savings. My neighbor pays 1/10th of what I pay for the same size apartment. Neither of us are leaving anytime soon. This is why there's no liquidity in the SF housing market. They're trapped and live in constant fear of being evicted.
On a philosophical level, why should my landlord be subsidizing our housing costs? If we want to make housing more affordable for low-income families, surely there's a more equitable way to finance it.
- baby 7y agoSame. I’m in a rent control place and I would never ever make the mistake of moving in a place that can arbitrarily increase its rent. I fee bad for people who didn’t have a choice and will probably have to move out at some point because of that :/
- bdcravens 7y agoDo you feel trapped at all? My understanding is that rent control only affects increases. So if the area you live in becomes less desirable, you're likely to face a choice of "starting over" and paying market rate, or sticking with your current living arrangement due to not wanting to lose that rate.
- baby 7y agoI feel trapped living in SF yes. You can’t purchase anything because it’s too expensive and if I want to move to a different place next year probably the prices will have increased.
- hindsightbias 7y agoWhy should we subsidize your landlord, paying on a Prop 13 valuation 1/10th the market rate? None of them are suffering.
- rcpt 7y agoI don't like rent control but I hate prop 13. Interesting is that Howard Jarvis rallied renter support claiming that landlords would be nice and pass the tax savings on to tenants. Of course this didn't happen and there were immediately movements for rent control around the state.