4 ms·

To your points: 1) People not moving to markets like SF because rent is too high and telling employers that is exactly what should happen! This forces employe

To your points: 1) People not moving to markets like SF because rent is too high and telling employers that is exactly what should happen! This forces employers to either lobby for more housing (a good thing) or open offices in reasonable cost of living locations (also a good thing) instead of continuing the status quo bubble. Rent control is a market distorting force in this case. 2) Rent control directly leads to fewer new housing units because there is a disincentive to create housing that's going to rent for below-market. If you want more housing, you should be opposed to rent control. I say this as someone who benefits greatly from rent control and still wants to see it die. 3) The population of SF has not remained extremely stable since the 90s. Look at [1]. There were 140,000 fewer people in the 90s than there are today (a 20% increase)! Also your reasoning that "there's no more space for people to live" is demonstrably false. Go visit Tokyo and then tell me there's no space for more people in SF. There's no more space because zoning laws and height restrictions in the city are absolutely ridiculous and serve NIMBY interests. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_San_Francisco https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_San_Francisco Edit: since someone is no doubt going to ask, here's a good summary of the economic literature on the topic. It covers a variety of effects related to rent control: https://econjwatch.org/File+download/238/2009-01-jenkins-reach_concl.pdf https://econjwatch.org/File+download/238/2009-01-jenkins-rea...

JamilD 7y ago
With respect to point (2), the argument doesn’t really work for SF; rent control only applies to units built before 1979. New developments can raise the rent as much as they want. You could argue the threat of possibly having rent control discourages new building, but it’s a much weaker argument. Your points in (3) I think are much, much more relevant to the SF housing crisis than rent control.
baby 7y ago
1) not going to happen. In my case, I wanted a job that only existed here. I can either pass on it, or accept it. 2) this is not true. Rent control does not apply to new buildings (unfortunately) 3) 100k in 20 years is NOTHING. The population of SF is still relatively small. And this is exactly my point, they can build more housing, they just don’t want to.

JamilD 7y ago

With respect to point (2), the argument doesn’t really work for SF; rent control only applies to units built before 1979. New developments can raise the rent as much as they want. You could argue the threat of possibly having rent control discourages new building, but it’s a much weaker argument. Your points in (3) I think are much, much more relevant to the SF housing crisis than rent control.

baby 7y ago

1) not going to happen. In my case, I wanted a job that only existed here. I can either pass on it, or accept it. 2) this is not true. Rent control does not apply to new buildings (unfortunately) 3) 100k in 20 years is NOTHING. The population of SF is still relatively small. And this is exactly my point, they can build more housing, they just don’t want to.