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> we now know rent control isn't bad Huge ask that we all accept that conclusion from the speech you linked.

by rcpt 5y ago

opportune 5y ago
Yeah. One has only to look at the housing market in Berlin to see that it can be bad. Of course that is one extreme and there are many different ways to implement rent control. Overall I think this is a whole other can of worms in itself though
- Ericson2314 5y ago
  Ideally we should build enough public housing that rent control isn't needed, just as ideally we should have strong enough unions that minimum wages aren't needed. But we fail miserably on both those counts, and denying the next best thing does not strike me as useful accelerationism.
ItsMonkk 5y ago
What Prop 13 does for owners, rent control does for renters. Both gives huge advantages to current residents at the expense of future residents. It's obvious why current residents would vote for such a change. This allows current residents to ignore problems as they occur, so these problems grow out of control. We can't keep giving benefits to certain populations of people. You need to work out the negative externalities and tax it. You need to work out the positive externalities and subsidize it. Anything else leads to perverse incentives. If you happen to have a surplus as a result of taxing negative externalities, you should take the tax money and give it back to your residents as a dividend. If you want to have parking minimums, if you want to have certain setbacks and limited building height, if you want to disallow building train-tracks through your backyard, that's fine. But those are externalities on the community and they should ultimately show in the Land Value and that needs to be taxed. When it is not taxed it is incentivized, and those perverse incentives only lead to more bad policies. A Land Value Tax would instantly turn most NIMBY voters into YIMBY voters. Fixing all of these follow-on symptoms would go from an up-hill battle to a downhill breeze. Focus on the disease, tax negative externalities.
- sudosysgen 5y ago
  Rent control doesn't just benefit current residents, any sane rent control policy carries forwards when tenants change. Those that don't are ineffective on purpose. Beyond that, lowering rents benefits even future residents and homeowners-to-be as they lower property values and dampen speculation.
- Lammy 5y ago
  > What Prop 13 does for owners, rent control does for renters. Economically trap them in their home/apartment forever, thus achieving segregation with extra steps? I agree.
  - rcpt 5y ago
    Right. There are measured lock in effects of both laws and both laws should go.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
Ericson2314 5y ago
Please. This is from an actual economist, not some political hack, and links have been added to the underlying studies. Disparaging this for being originally a speech is intellectually lazy.
- slibhb 5y ago
  There are actual economists who think rent control doesn't hurt supply. And there are actual economists who think the opposite. Given that, saying "we now know rent control isn't bad" is quite a stretch. Personally, I don't understand how rent couldn't hurt housing supply. I do understand that there is empirical evidence suggesting it doesn't but I'll remain skeptical until there's some theory explaining how that could be that I can understand.
  - sudosysgen 5y ago
    We know, empirically, that rent control, when it satisfies some key constraints, is effective. Unless you are one of those that thinks that economics isn't subject to the scientific method, reality trumps theory. And it's false that we have no theory of why rent control is effective, we absolutely do.
    - slibhb 5y ago
      You and the above poster are overstating your case. Your post boils down to "don't u believe in science lol?" I agree with this comment: https://jwmason.org/slackwire/considerations-on-rent-control/#comment-1330 https://jwmason.org/slackwire/considerations-on-rent-control... I think that if rent control doesn't hurt housing supply, it's because of various regulations that are distorting the market. Enacting rent control instead of reforming those regulations seems silly to me.
      - sudosysgen 5y ago
        It's on you to show an example of a city where these various regulations are absent and where rent control hurt housing supply. Good luck. I'm being serious here, if you think that a vague, purely theoretical argument, from theories that we already know are very far from complete, is a match for empirical evidence, then you are not treating economics as a science.

> we now know rent control isn't bad Huge ask that we all accept that conclusion from the speech you linked.

by rcpt 5y ago

> we now know rent control isn't bad Huge ask that we all accept that conclusion from the speech you linked.

Yeah. One has only to look at the housing market in Berlin to see that it can be bad. Of course that is one extreme and there are many different ways to implement rent control. Overall I think this is a whole other can of worms in itself though

Ericson2314 5y ago
Ideally we should build enough public housing that rent control isn't needed, just as ideally we should have strong enough unions that minimum wages aren't needed. But we fail miserably on both those counts, and denying the next best thing does not strike me as useful accelerationism.

ItsMonkk 5y ago

What Prop 13 does for owners, rent control does for renters. Both gives huge advantages to current residents at the expense of future residents. It's obvious why current residents would vote for such a change. This allows current residents to ignore problems as they occur, so these problems grow out of control. We can't keep giving benefits to certain populations of people. You need to work out the negative externalities and tax it. You need to work out the positive externalities and subsidize it. Anything else leads to perverse incentives. If you happen to have a surplus as a result of taxing negative externalities, you should take the tax money and give it back to your residents as a dividend. If you want to have parking minimums, if you want to have certain setbacks and limited building height, if you want to disallow building train-tracks through your backyard, that's fine. But those are externalities on the community and they should ultimately show in the Land Value and that needs to be taxed. When it is not taxed it is incentivized, and those perverse incentives only lead to more bad policies. A Land Value Tax would instantly turn most NIMBY voters into YIMBY voters. Fixing all of these follow-on symptoms would go from an up-hill battle to a downhill breeze. Focus on the disease, tax negative externalities.

sudosysgen 5y ago
Rent control doesn't just benefit current residents, any sane rent control policy carries forwards when tenants change. Those that don't are ineffective on purpose. Beyond that, lowering rents benefits even future residents and homeowners-to-be as they lower property values and dampen speculation.
Lammy 5y ago
> What Prop 13 does for owners, rent control does for renters. Economically trap them in their home/apartment forever, thus achieving segregation with extra steps? I agree.
- rcpt 5y ago
  Right. There are measured lock in effects of both laws and both laws should go.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

Ericson2314 5y ago

Please. This is from an actual economist, not some political hack, and links have been added to the underlying studies. Disparaging this for being originally a speech is intellectually lazy.

slibhb 5y ago
There are actual economists who think rent control doesn't hurt supply. And there are actual economists who think the opposite. Given that, saying "we now know rent control isn't bad" is quite a stretch. Personally, I don't understand how rent couldn't hurt housing supply. I do understand that there is empirical evidence suggesting it doesn't but I'll remain skeptical until there's some theory explaining how that could be that I can understand.
- sudosysgen 5y ago
  We know, empirically, that rent control, when it satisfies some key constraints, is effective. Unless you are one of those that thinks that economics isn't subject to the scientific method, reality trumps theory. And it's false that we have no theory of why rent control is effective, we absolutely do.
  - slibhb 5y ago
    You and the above poster are overstating your case. Your post boils down to "don't u believe in science lol?" I agree with this comment: https://jwmason.org/slackwire/considerations-on-rent-control/#comment-1330 https://jwmason.org/slackwire/considerations-on-rent-control... I think that if rent control doesn't hurt housing supply, it's because of various regulations that are distorting the market. Enacting rent control instead of reforming those regulations seems silly to me.
    - sudosysgen 5y ago
      It's on you to show an example of a city where these various regulations are absent and where rent control hurt housing supply. Good luck. I'm being serious here, if you think that a vague, purely theoretical argument, from theories that we already know are very far from complete, is a match for empirical evidence, then you are not treating economics as a science.