5 ms·
How would you deal with the root causes?
by jackvalentine 7y ago
How would you deal with the root causes?
- AnthonyMouse 7y agoImpose relaxed zoning rules at the state level instead of imposing rent control there.
- jackvalentine 7y agoI would completely agree with that, but for some reason it isn't as politically do-able as this rent control legislation was.
- AnthonyMouse 7y ago> I would completely agree with that, but for some reason it isn't as politically do-able as this rent control legislation was. The reason is that landlords know exactly what rent control does. Landlords know that the tenants with the strongest interest in local housing costs are the people who already live there and plan to continue to do so indefinitely. Rent control is a method of buying them off without actually solving the problem in general, so that overall rents and housing costs remain high but the subset of people most likely to be politically active in doing something to correct that gets a bribe to stop objecting while overall housing costs continue to rise faster than inflation. What it is, then, is not a step on the road to a real solution, it's a roadblock preventing that from happening by weakening opposition to the status quo by just enough that no actually effective reforms can be enacted.
- jackvalentine 7y agoSo how would you solve the root cause?
- AnthonyMouse 7y agoThe policy solution is known -- ease restrictions on increasing the housing supply. If you're asking how to get that passed, well, that's an education problem. You need people to understand why rent control is not a solution so that they are not willing to accept it over something that actually works.
- jackvalentine 7y agoWhat I’m getting at is that’s policy and doing are inextricably linked and frankly people have had enough of sneering technocrats telling them the optimal solution that they’re powerless to peruse. Rent control is a bad idea... but sometimes the only way to bring good ideas in to the realms of possibility is to do bad ideas first.
- sgc 7y agoHanlon's rasor: Some idiot naively thought up this legislation and a bunch of people voted it in because it sounded "good". This was most probably brought into being by a bunch of bumbling fools trying to do good without due diligence rather than by a cabal of elite landowners.
- AnthonyMouse 7y agoIt's hardly ever a cabal or some group of elites conspiring in a smoke filled room. Landlords in general know that people are clamoring for something to be done about housing costs, most of them know that easing supply restrictions would be more effective in actually lowering rents than rent control, so they each on average fight hard against the actual solution and less hard against the ineffective one. Then the ineffective one is the one that passes. It's the sort of false compromise that happens in politics all the time. Instead of solving the problem, you enact some alleged solution that really does nothing or makes the problem worse, but then politicians get to go tell the voters that they've done something. Then, when it doesn't work, they get to go back and pass another ineffective bill to "solve" it again in the next election cycle, meanwhile we get another four years of young people not being able to afford housing.
- sgc 7y agoMost landlords I know want to ease building restrictions so they can build more rental units, and have a less expensive higher quality building than buying an old beater that they stitch back together again.