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It is absolutely a rent control and price control policy. You are literally preventing rents from rising. Landlords abusing tenants is totally irrelevant beca

It is absolutely a rent control and price control policy. You are literally preventing rents from rising. Landlords abusing tenants is totally irrelevant because rent control doesn't address that problem at all, it just shifts that abuse to new tenants for the benefit of long term residents, since the entire policy is a wealth transfer to people who never move from where they live.

ysavir 4y ago
> It is absolutely a rent control and price control policy. You are literally preventing rents from rising. As both the article and the GP pointed out, rent stabilization does allow for rents to increase. Are you trying to say they aren't allowed to increase enough, or are you under the impression they don't rise at all?
- faeriechangling 4y ago
  Wow, so the rate at which the price of RENT is increasing is being subject to CONTROLS? In any case, the exact same economic phenomena has been observed regardless of if you fix rent increases to inflation or never allow for rents to increase, because the two approaches are just incredibly similar variants of price controls.
  - ysavir 4y ago
    Your words were "You are literally preventing rents from rising", which is quite different, and wrong.
    - eastbound 4y ago
      Inflation rises more.
      - ysavir 4y ago
        That's a different point from what the OP was saying
    - sethammons 4y ago
      If you hold a balloon under water and slowly let it float up by holding it down, you are preventing it from rising (as fast as it otherwise would).
      - ysavir 4y ago
        Notice how the parenthesis is important? The original poster didn't include any such qualification, they just asserted "preventing rent from rising".
- throwaway292939 4y ago
  In other words, it's still a price control, albeit less aggressive.
mattzito 4y ago
This is inaccurate. Rent control as defined in NYC is a wealth transfer mechanism. Rent stabilization is a mechanism for protecting tenants. Without rent stabilization, landlords can and do raise rents arbitrarily to drive our particular renters and then offer better rents to preferred renters. Or equally likely drive out a family to subdivide an apartment into multiple rooms to rent. If you pass laws that say, for example, you have to offer a renewal to an existing tenant, that doesn’t help, they’ll just play the same game with the rent. Mandate that the same rent has to be offered to new and existing? Well now we are in the realm of price controls. The power dynamic is so massive between landlords and tenants, especially for people who aren’t fortunate enough to have disposable income, that there needs to be some sort of protection.
- roenxi 4y ago
  > ...landlords can and do raise rents arbitrarily to drive our particular renters and then offer better rents to preferred renters... This is positing that landlords engage in complicated schemes to lower the rent they are paid. I speak with supreme confidence, the median landlord is not going to do that unless these 'preferred renters' are measurably better than the people getting kicked out, in ways that make objective sense. Frankly, if a landlord is engaging in this practice then they probably aren't a 'landlord', they've just taken the property out of the rental market so their kids can live there or something. > ...drive out a family to subdivide an apartment into multiple rooms to rent. A landlord is much more likely to do that, but the complaint here is that there are people willing to value the m2 of the apartment higher than the family. There is no way to block that from happening without price controls and, eventually, shortages emerging. The landlords in the article are greedy, they don't want their apartments to be empty. They want to be renting them out for whatever the most willing renter is going to give them. But they also aren't stupid, and they aren't going to rent them out anticipating that they will make losses.
  - Spivak 4y ago
    > there are people willing to value the m2 of the apartment higher than the family That’s all well and good but that isn’t the issue. Part of the contract for renting an apartment in NYC is that you must offer renewals. A lease is a contract that, unless there’s an eviction, only the tenant can end. And allowing landlords to violate the spirit of the law by saying “we didn’t kick them out we only raised the rent to $10k/mo” defeats the whole purpose of it which is to not rip housing out from underneath people.

ysavir 4y ago

> It is absolutely a rent control and price control policy. You are literally preventing rents from rising. As both the article and the GP pointed out, rent stabilization does allow for rents to increase. Are you trying to say they aren't allowed to increase enough, or are you under the impression they don't rise at all?

faeriechangling 4y ago
Wow, so the rate at which the price of RENT is increasing is being subject to CONTROLS? In any case, the exact same economic phenomena has been observed regardless of if you fix rent increases to inflation or never allow for rents to increase, because the two approaches are just incredibly similar variants of price controls.
- ysavir 4y ago
  Your words were "You are literally preventing rents from rising", which is quite different, and wrong.
  - eastbound 4y ago
    Inflation rises more.
    - ysavir 4y ago
      That's a different point from what the OP was saying
  - sethammons 4y ago
    If you hold a balloon under water and slowly let it float up by holding it down, you are preventing it from rising (as fast as it otherwise would).
    - ysavir 4y ago
      Notice how the parenthesis is important? The original poster didn't include any such qualification, they just asserted "preventing rent from rising".
throwaway292939 4y ago
In other words, it's still a price control, albeit less aggressive.

mattzito 4y ago

This is inaccurate. Rent control as defined in NYC is a wealth transfer mechanism. Rent stabilization is a mechanism for protecting tenants. Without rent stabilization, landlords can and do raise rents arbitrarily to drive our particular renters and then offer better rents to preferred renters. Or equally likely drive out a family to subdivide an apartment into multiple rooms to rent. If you pass laws that say, for example, you have to offer a renewal to an existing tenant, that doesn’t help, they’ll just play the same game with the rent. Mandate that the same rent has to be offered to new and existing? Well now we are in the realm of price controls. The power dynamic is so massive between landlords and tenants, especially for people who aren’t fortunate enough to have disposable income, that there needs to be some sort of protection.

roenxi 4y ago
> ...landlords can and do raise rents arbitrarily to drive our particular renters and then offer better rents to preferred renters... This is positing that landlords engage in complicated schemes to lower the rent they are paid. I speak with supreme confidence, the median landlord is not going to do that unless these 'preferred renters' are measurably better than the people getting kicked out, in ways that make objective sense. Frankly, if a landlord is engaging in this practice then they probably aren't a 'landlord', they've just taken the property out of the rental market so their kids can live there or something. > ...drive out a family to subdivide an apartment into multiple rooms to rent. A landlord is much more likely to do that, but the complaint here is that there are people willing to value the m2 of the apartment higher than the family. There is no way to block that from happening without price controls and, eventually, shortages emerging. The landlords in the article are greedy, they don't want their apartments to be empty. They want to be renting them out for whatever the most willing renter is going to give them. But they also aren't stupid, and they aren't going to rent them out anticipating that they will make losses.
- Spivak 4y ago
  > there are people willing to value the m2 of the apartment higher than the family That’s all well and good but that isn’t the issue. Part of the contract for renting an apartment in NYC is that you must offer renewals. A lease is a contract that, unless there’s an eviction, only the tenant can end. And allowing landlords to violate the spirit of the law by saying “we didn’t kick them out we only raised the rent to $10k/mo” defeats the whole purpose of it which is to not rip housing out from underneath people.