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Tangentially related... I like that data is presented, but I find it rather short term oriented. I have lived in market rate neighborhoods and have known the a

• Kalium 6y ago
  It's perhaps worth considering these as forces to be balanced, rather than one extreme or the other being maximally desirable. Market rate neighborhoods with ever-increasing rent bring dynamism and are often an entry point into a city for professionals. They're liquid, and enable people to upsize or downsize their living situations with relative ease. Businesses and people come and go and there's an irrepressable energy to it. (There's a strong argument that the kind of risk, stress, and precariousness you rightly and richly describe are an effect of a NIMBY-induced housing crisis. The "market rate" and "rent control" dichotomy suggests that something is seriously hinky in the housing market at hand.) Rent controlled areas are calmer, slower, more stable. They are better for people who are able to find a place exactly to their liking and whose lives are improved by their ability to hold the world at bay. Which obviously never lasts forever. Things always change. As you say, both have long-term consequences. It's perhaps worth considering that perhaps neither set is inherently better than the other. And, above all, it's possible that the divide between the two could be underappreciated long-term consequences of policy.
  • deleted 6y ago
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  • presentation 6y ago
    My anecdata, coming from SF to Japan: people seem much less stressed about getting kicked out of their homes here or having their rent raised despite no rent control because there is actually sufficient supply, and people aren’t depending on their house to gain value over time for their financial future (housing is generally a depreciating asset). People tend to stay in the same homes for very long periods of time, and are invested in their local communities, but you can get short term housing or move frequently if you wish (short term leases exist but to be expected, cost to value ratio isn’t great; generally 1 year minimums without penalty for long term leases with 1 month rent fee if you leave earlier, and with high fees (3-5 months rent!) when you move in, so it’s not economically encouraged to hop a lot; I personally find these high costs unreasonable, but seems to be well accepted here). Housing is generally reasonably priced; you can live within 30 mins of central Tokyo by train for less than $400/mo as a single person in an apartment (SF seems to completely lack cheap, small options for single people); but for a significantly larger premium, you can get a standalone house as well if you’d like. For me, despite living in a significantly more expensive apartment, I generally spend significantly more on going out to restaurants and stuff than my rent. I personally think that if cities really invested in transit and relaxed zoning and permitting significantly, densifying neighborhoods, that market rate can produce the best of both worlds; but that would threaten the view that housing is an investment as the cornerstone of ones financial life, so it’s unlikely to happen in a place like the US.
    • blackrock 6y ago
      > because there is actually sufficient supply Exactly! Build more housing! Homes should be made for living. Not for investments or speculation. Why is the American public and the politicians so clueless about this? Well, because they are the landlords that benefits from all the price increases. They are the foxes guarding the hen house.
      • hannasanarion 6y ago
        I think the more crucial part of the japanese example is > housing is generally a depreciating asset Housing cannot simultaneously be affordable and a good investment. In America, policymakers tend to prioritize real estate value over the ability of housing to actually house people. Homebuyers expect and demand that the values of their properties, including the rents that they generate, be constantly increasing. Supply and demand doesn't push prices down, because housing is inelastic: when you hike prices outside of people's means, they don't stop buying, they find more means, either by taking on more roommates, more jobs, or by making big cuts elsewhere in their budgets. Before the housing market was commodified and public housing looted by private interests in the 70s and 80s, spending 20% of your income on housing was considered absurdly high. Now 50% is the norm, because landlords and speculators keep raising prices and you can't not live in a house.
  • ridaj 6y ago
    > It's perhaps worth considering these as forces to be balanced, rather than one extreme or the other being maximally desirable. +1 > There's a strong argument that the kind of risk, stress, and precariousness you rightly and richly describe are an effect of a NIMBY-induced housing crisis. Perhaps, but in my personal case, I think it was the opposite. I experienced this in an environment that is highly favorable to private, market-rate high-rise housing development. Both San Francisco and NYC have housing shortage problems but I'm more likely to believe San Francisco's problem is inflicted by NIMBYism than New York's...
    • astrange 6y ago
      NYC is very NIMBY and undemocratic (practically noone votes in local elections). The reason you don't hear about it more is that YIMBYism is not developed enough there for people to complain about it, but the population of NYC is decreasing because of housing supply issues. They also have a lot of left-NIMBY people making wrong arguments based on things they imagine are happening; in this case it's that all new housing is luxury towers that are being bought by "investors" and kept empty, for some reason related to taxes, instead of being rented out.
    • Kalium 6y ago
      > Perhaps, but in my personal case, I think it was the opposite. I experienced this in an environment that is highly favorable to private, market-rate high-rise housing development. A great many people would characterize SF as highly favorable to private, market-rate high-rise housing development. I think this would be inaccurate, but they would say it with sincerity. I cannot find good maps on this particular subject, but I would venture to guess that much of NYC is not built of high-rises. It's likely mostly low-rises with a smattering of four to six story buildings built up to or exceeding current zoning. I would venture to guess that trying to get a parcel or an area up-zoned is a politically fraught and potentially quite expensive proposition.
• jszymborski 6y ago
  I haven't read the papers cited in this article, but I agree that as presented in the paper, they're awfully short-term. Without the knowledge of whether these trends continue into the long-term, these (small-percentage) dips in rent could be caused by any number of factors ranging from the decrease of rent caused by the recent construction of the buildings to the more abstract uncertainty of what changes in neighborhood composition an influx of people lured by a high-rise might cause. Like I said, maybe that sort of thing is addressed in the papers, but as presented it isn't addressed outside of that comment about arson.
• sampo 6y ago
  > I have also lived in rent controlled areas where, even as a renter, these worries go away. This is very selfish thinking. What if the whole city was rent controlled? Economy and population would stagnate. You want to have the benefit of living in a small privileged rent controlled pocket, while the rest of the city stays alive and vibrant due to free market economy.
  • mattnewton 6y ago
    Anecdotal, but San Francisco is mostly rent controlled and the economy and population haven't stagnated. It's not obvious to me why that has to be so. Is there work that shows this is usually the case?
    • solveit 6y ago
      > It's not obvious to me why that has to be so. Because ceteris is never paribus. The comparison is with the counterfactual world in which SF wasn't rent-controlled. Now, we can never know what would have happened, but I think there's a very strong case to be made that such an SF would be even more of a roaring powerhouse than it is now.
      • mattnewton 6y ago
        Sure, but it's not obvious to me what allowing rents to move more freely for more of the city does for the local economy. It could be the stability rent control provides allows for long term growth and prevents shocks of large population loss or gain, for another example model. I was wondering if you or gp had reasources that make the case for an unregulated rent market.
        • solveit 6y ago
          I mean, econ 101 says rent control (along with blocking new construction) will hinder people who can produce more (economic) value from moving in and replacing their less productive counterparts. Econ 101 is often naive and wrong, but it should be the default prior you work from unless you have a compelling case to the contrary. That is, you shouldn't be looking for resources that make the case for an unregulated rent market, the burden of proof should be on the people who want to regulate rent, and I have never seen a compelling refutation of the naive econ 101 view for rent control (in the case of SF and other tech hubs that I presume HN is most interested in).
• stickyricky 6y ago
  If long term stability is important to you, you should consider buying a condo. In my research, a condo is almost always positive NPV (relative to renting an apartment) after 24 months. That would solve your issue with getting priced out after a couple renewal cycles. The payment would be steady (sans any special assessments).
  • ridaj 6y ago
    Oh I'm all good where I am. Just pointing out what it does to the character of a neighborhood to have long-term renters stick around for the long haul. In rent-controlled markets, in my experience it's not unusual for long-term renters to enjoy significantly lower housing costs than if they were to buy an equivalent condo. I know that when I looked it was definitely the case for me unless I had bought with > 50% down. Property taxes alone would've represented half of my rent, HOA another bit, so I would've had to have a very low mortgage.
    • Robotbeat 6y ago
      The thing you're talking about is the same as if people were owners. But the advantage is that an ownership driven market (see Singapore) is more dynamic and allows people to actually live in the city where they work instead of commuting for an hour. Noah Smith has other articles about how to do government-built but occupant owned housing like Singapore. It's far better than rent-control, which tends to privilege existing tenants at the expense of people who need jobs but weren't lucky enough to have been born in a rent-controlled apartment.
      • ridaj 6y ago
        I'll have to check them out. I somehow doubt that Americans will trust their governments to build housing to their liking. It'd take some serious image turnaround for middle class Americans to be attracted to the notion of government housing... What happens in practice in the US today with government-backed mortgages is effectively government subsidized owner-occupied housing, but development is privatized.
• btilly 6y ago
  Your thinking is not long-term, it is at best medium-term. You hopefully are convinced by the article that short-term, building housing drops prices. You are correct that for the people who live in a place, rent control affects their lives. But the result of rent control is that when places open up, there is a massive excess of demand. Which results in high prices in the long term. The housing market in Silicon Valley and the Bay Area reflects this. And preserving the quality of life of people who are privileged enough to start in the neighborhood is what is causing the long-term problem of too little housing and rents that are massively too high. With commutes that are beyond insane. Given political realities, the only hope that I have for a long-term change is that thanks to COVID, more companies have realized that they can let everyone telecommute. And after enough people move far away for cheaper housing in prettier places (prices are rising rapidly in rural counties!) the reduced demand will fix prices. But it will take a few years after the pandemic is over before we know if that is a long-term trend or a blip.
  • ridaj 6y ago
    > But the result of rent control is that when places open up, there is a massive excess of demand. I would challenge the notion that the problems of housing demand exceeding supply are all tied back to rent control. Zoning plays a big role. Incentives play a big role. Government leadership plays a big role. Some rent-controlled areas are economically dynamic and others aren't. I just don't think there's a clear correlation.
    • btilly 6y ago
      Yes, there are many contributing factors. But in both theory and attempts to measure real-world data, rent control is a big factor.
• zozbot234 6y ago
  Rent control is the pettiest sort of bourgeois privilege. I'm sure that the SF homeless population appreciates "the good character of a rent-controlled neighborhood"...How can people talk with a straight face about the terrible "angst" of being charged a higher rent and perhaps having to pick a slightly lower-cost area in the first place. It's just mind-boggling.
  • ta2987 6y ago
    So the bourgeois is... everybody that lives indoors? That's an interesting definition.
  • ridaj 6y ago
    Housing insecurity is the problem in both cases. I was fortunately able to relocate, but surely some of the homeless population in San Fransisco was forced out of where they lived after a period of housing insecurity as well.
  • sudosysgen 6y ago
    Yes, bourgeois privilege is being worried about being forced to be completely alienated from your social group because you can't afford rent, and have the choice to either move to another city while being poor and having no social safety net, maybe even risking homelessness. Do words still mean anything? There are rent controlled cities with low homeless populations. The fix is public housing.
• babesh 6y ago
  I live in a Bay Area suburb with mostly single family homes. One would think that people would form communities but you would be surprised. Many of the newer tech people just treat it as a bedroom whereas some parents and older residents treat it as a community. I think much of new tech is mercenary. They aren’t from the area. They came to make money. They don’t care about the neighborhood. When they can make more money elsewhere they will leave. In fact, with COVID-19, many have and are. Even if you build a bunch of tech fish tanks, the surrounding area will still become very expensive. Yes, building more tech fish tanks can make it less worse, but it is still be untenable for existing residents. An artisanal coffee shop replacing a donut shop just made coffee unaffordable for the less wealthy. I think that a much better connected transit system is actually the answer. It will allow new communities to form farther off but still connected to the whole. It gives everyone a place at the table and increases the cultural richness. NYC feels much more culturally rich than SF and I think that is why. Instead, in the Bay Area, you had the black community moving to Sacramento. Also, those fishtanks were folly. It would have been much better for the city to have more mixed housing in those neighborhoods. By mixed, I mean having some larger units that allow families to stay. In a way, in the SOMA, you replaced the original SROs with tech SROs. The irony. I think the transit villages were also terribly designed. Most are aligned around the track. That makes no sense from a noise pollution standpoint. It makes far more sense to build either perpendicular to the track or at least a block away. Stepping back even further, government had and has an issue with attracting talent. It was hopelessly inadequate at addressing the challenges and taking advantage of the opportunities.
  • almost_usual 6y ago
    > I think much of new tech is mercenary. They aren’t from the area. They came to make money. They don’t care about the neighborhood. When they can make more money elsewhere they will leave. In fact, with COVID-19, many have and are. That’s literally the history of SF and why the city even began existing. The ‘attitude’ isn’t anything new, SF is built on gold mining and get rich opportunities.
    • babesh 6y ago
      Yes agree. That attitude is definitely part of the history of SF and it didn’t occur just once.
• kelnos 6y ago
  The problem is deeper, though. You shouldn't need rent control to feel secure in your housing. Rent control is a band-aid that can be helpful in areas that are essentially broken when it comes to housing. Ideally we want to set policy so the situation doesn't get so bad that rent control is necessary. Even without rent control, you shouldn't need to worry every year, because the housing market should be sane and there'd be no reason to expect more than a token increase in your rent. Obviously the ideal is far from reality in many places. But rent control is not a solution; it's just a useful mitigation that papers over problems (and unfortunately often creates new ones).
  • sudosysgen 6y ago
    I live in a city with rent control. Rent here is around half of comparable cities in my area. Issues that economists have with rent control in theory basically don't exist because the rent control system minimizes them. I think it's absurd to say that rent control doesn't work. Badly implemented rent control is just a useful mitigation. Correctly implemented rent control, with a healthy dose of public housing and private supply increase, actually is a solution - but the rent control and public housing part is a lot more important than the private supply increase and is also the part that YIMBYs such as the author never get implemented in practice.
    • astrange 6y ago
      Do you live in Vienna? That's the public housing system people point to, but it's also the only one that seems to work. SF historically had public housing with the obvious downside that the people who ran it, being US government workers in the 50s, were super racist, so the people who lived in it suffered. Currently there's a system of privatized/contracted affordable housing development, which is effective and produces housing that looks just like market-rate housing, so people don't believe it exists because it doesn't look cheap enough. The author does want public housing but also wants Singapore's HDB system.
      • sudosysgen 6y ago
        I do not live in Vienna - I live in Montréal. We have a system that is a mix of a structurally HDB-like provincial system, municipal housing systems, private construction, private/public cooperation, and rent control. If your issue is that public housing is run by racist people, the solution is to have it run by non-racist people. This tends to be easier when people that live in public housing are more diverse and have a larger electoral impact. The way that we handle the downsides of rent control is by allowing landlords to break the rent-control cycle by doing major renovations, and by making rental contracts basically all end at the same date which allows for a much lower friction in moving. While the author may very well want it, unless they make it their #1 priority, they won't actually implement it as there is much more resistance against public housing than to anything else. The end result will be that the "compromise" will be no new public housing and simply zoning relaxations at most, with continued increase in rents.
• dehrmann 6y ago
  > these worries go away Only to be replaced by you staying in a place that's inappropriate for you life circumstances for too long with the looming prospect of an Ellis Act eviction. But yes, it makes for a nice 5-year time horizon.
  • ridaj 6y ago
    Eh, maybe. Not sure how Ellis Act works. If the alternative is living month to month I'd take that...
• imtringued 6y ago
  Market rate housing is about setting up for long term success. It will slowly solve the existing housing problems but that's not what it's primarily for. It's about preventing housing problems from happening in the first place. It's like a vaccine. If you want to stay healthy you have to take it even if you don't like it. The reason why market rate housing alone is insufficient is because how slow it is. Highest bidders get filled first. Cities have a lot of bidders, but not an infinite amount and those who are hit the hardest are at the bottom of the list. Public housing is about meeting demand at the bottom first. So in a deeply mismanaged housing market you need both at the same time. The other factor is that if the government is unable to build because of existing policies it can just change those self defeating policies (things like zoning).
• theflyinghorse 6y ago
  > I have also lived in rent controlled areas where, even as a renter, these worries go away. ... . People can build for the long term, engage with their neighborhood organizations, form a stable community. You frequently see people staying in the same apartments for decades. Why not work to a place where you could OWN and not RENT if long term is your goal. Build more housing, allow people to buy property to live in and watch them organically grow communities.
  • jszymborski 6y ago
    Not everyone has the capital to buy homes outright in areas that are e.g.: close to their place of work/well-funded public schools, or in which they feel safe. Furthermore, buying houses can be a risky proposition, particularly since we're speaking about the context of fluctuating housing prices.
    • coding123 6y ago
      This is actually something that I wish was fixed. We can't do anything but treat it as a market priced entity - but I wish there was another way - a way to own but not own. Something between rent and own. Maybe if a non-profit organization could somehow start "owning" a bunch of homes and people buy into the organization. For each "owner" they are allocated a house. And then to move is to just find someone else that is moving within this large house owning organization. Kinda like a vast distributed network across the country that owns houses and people pay a standard rate to live in it. If you can't pay, you're out of the network until you can again.