9 ms·

If they think it's unfair, they could just... not rent their buildings out. There's plenty of buildings in the US that don't come under rent control laws that t

If they think it's unfair, they could just... not rent their buildings out. There's plenty of buildings in the US that don't come under rent control laws that they could buy and rent out.

SilasX 12y ago
And if you're fine with the supply contracting further in already-choked markets, then that works! If not ...
- vertex-four 12y ago
  Well, obviously, given that we're discussing rental in a rent-control city, it doesn't entirely kill off rental.
  - SilasX 12y ago
    "Not entirely killing off the rental market" is a pretty low bar to clear :-P
cookiecaper 12y ago
Landlords have the right to change their mind when it comes time for lease renewal. You're arguing that landlords should be forced to always rent their property to the same tenant once they begin. That's how ownership, not rental, works. Rentals are for a limited time by definition.
- vertex-four 12y ago
  > Rentals are for a limited time by definition. I know people (in fact, every branch of my family, along with many of my friends) who have rented their entire lives, because they can't own - they've never been able to amass enough capital or convince someone else to lend them it. Should they be uprooted every year (or more often) because someone wants to make a bit more money? Rentals are whatever the combination of the contract and the local law say they are, by definition.
  - mod 12y ago
    > Should they be uprooted every year (or more often) because someone wants to make a bit more money? No, they shouldn't be, but that's not really the issue. The issue is: should landlords be legally allowed to uproot them? My answer is a decisive yes. For whatever the reason, they should be able to not renew a contract once it expires. I don't see why laws should be in place to restrict how much someone makes. Nobody has to have that particular apartment, or live in that particular place, etc. There's always options.
    - vertex-four 12y ago
      > No, they shouldn't be, but that's not really the issue. Yes, it really is. Which does the most harm - uprooting people and families every year, forcing them to deal with the stress of moving and finding new life patterns which match wherever they live now, or disallowing landlords from making a bit more money? EDIT: s/allowing/disallowing/
      - mod 12y ago
        I guess you mean "disallowing landlords to make more money." Again I think that's a red herring. There are plenty of reasons an owner might want to remove a tenant outside of profit. But again, it's not the issue--this is really straight to the heart of property rights. Someone owns a property, and by and large, should be able to do what they want with that property. Living on someone else's property is part of the risk of renting. Similar to working for someone else--would you also argue an employer should have to keep paying a worker who is underperforming (or any of a litany of legitimate reasons), because if they didn't that worker might have to deal with the stress of moving & finding new life patterns?
        vertex-four 12y ago
        Property rights only exist because of the law, otherwise, in general, property amounts to "what you can personally protect from people using force". It makes sense that alternate property models from "full ownership" can be implemented without the world crumbling. As I say in another comment, when you rent out a house to a tenant, you already lose certain property rights, at least while the tenant is living there. You can't write a contract which allows you to keep them, by law. You usually even have certain duties to the tenant, as much as landlords like to shirk these. This is the same in many developed countries, and the world's yet to fall apart for it.
- cma 12y ago
  In a rent controlled area, they don't have that right, by definition. Rent controlled rentals aren't for a limited time, with various exceptions, by definition.
  - vertex-four 12y ago
    Yes, they do have that right. They can use the building themselves, rent it to someone more trusted (family/friends), or sell it. They don't have to rent it out in the first place, so the building never has to come under rent control.
    - cma 12y ago
      Yes, you technically can rent it for a limited time of zero, meaning they do have the right to rent it for a limited time, in some weird mathematical field theory of rental treating that as the additive identity element or something.
      - simoncion 12y ago
        It's those exceptions that you glossed over in your initial comment that cause your assertion to be incorrect. Landlords have a variety of legal options to terminate a rent-controlled lease. Those options are almost always less palatable than continuing the lease. This is by design, and -in areas with obscene housing supply issues- good for society. Housing security is far more important for societal well-being than the fullness of a landlord's wallet.
- bigiain 12y ago
  On the other hand, the owner of this building would have benefitted from the intended effect of rent control on the price of the property when they bought it. There's no doubt that a rent controlled apartment building would fetch less at sale time than a non-rent-controlled equivalent. Sure, landlords "have the right to change their mind", but only within the legal/regulatory framework in which they've chosen to invest. But hey, "Uber, but for residential rentals". There's clearly _some_ people who'd benefit from doing end-runs around the rules by which everybody _else_ plays... (Just think for a minute about how surge pricing for apartment rentals in SF would look... All the "locals" moving out to Oakland or Pleasanton while WWDC or Google IO is on, and moving back in again during Burningman...)
  - kelnos 12y ago
    I think there's actually even more to the comparison you've made than you've said: the reason Uber is generally ok, even though it does make an end-run around some transportation regulation, is that the existence of Uber doesn't take anything away from anyone. Taxis still exist, people can ride in them. If existing taxi drivers are losing business, there are avenues they can take to recover that business (often imperfectly). Making an end-run around housing laws almost unilaterally benefits an already-privileged group (land owners), at the expense of others.
- kelnos 12y ago
  Rentals are for a limited time by definition. If you're going to trot out an absolutist term like "by definition", I'd like to inform you that "limited time" is by no means a condition for being defined as "rent": http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/rent http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/rent I know that sounds a bit pedantic and splitting hairs, but if you're going to base your argument on re-defining what words mean... that's a bit of a problem.
  - mod 12y ago
    "A bit" is an understatement. You're overtly, obnoxiously pedantic when you reference a single dictionary and ignore common usage, particularly in this thread. Yes, I know, that sounds harsh, but "doing your homework" is a necessary precondition for being a pedant. Check another dictionary and it's part of the definition: http://www.thefreedictionary.com/rent http://www.thefreedictionary.com/rent (verb, 2) In common use, it's always in conjunction with a temporary agreement. You don't "rent (a home) forever." GP didn't make up some new usage to further his argument.
    - kelnos 12y ago
      Touché, though I don't agree with you on the "common usage" bit. People do in fact "rent (a home) forever", and from what I've gathered it's not that uncommon, at least for cases where "forever" is a person's adult life span. Even considering the temporary case, what does "temporary" mean? 1 year? 2? 5? 10? Where's the cut-off where you've rented for "too long" and it's ok to be kicked out of your home? Even if you can pick a number for that yourself, I hope you can agree that others might have different numbers, and that the selection of such a number is somewhat arbitrary. I think the fact that all of this is a problem proves the point that people do expect to be able to rent a home for some value of "forever" (or even some value of "temporary") that is larger than a landlord's profit motive would allow. Look, if I want to rent a power saw from a hardware store that offers rentals, me keeping that saw for a long time isn't a problem, assuming I'm continuing to make payments[1]. If the hardware store finds there are more people wanting saws, and they're running out, they'll just buy more; there's a ready supply. The same thing doesn't work for housing because land is a limited public resource. In SF's case it's even more limited due to the arbitrary new-construction planning process and disappointing level of NIMBYism in the city that means we can never keep up with demand, Mayor Lee's housing initiatives notwithstanding. This is why real property law doesn't give absolute power to the owner of that property. There are rules. You can't discriminate based on protected classes, for one. Rent control is another rule. The Ellis act is yet another. These rules aren't perfect, but they do tend to protect people who would otherwise be at the short end of a very unpleasant landlord-tenant power dynamic. [1] It might be stupid for me to do so, financially, since I'd fairly quickly pay more than the cost of a new saw, but let's assume that, like housing in SF, the cost of a new saw is several hundred times the cost to rent it. This also serves to point out that owning a house is financially impossible for many people, while renting -- up until recently -- was much more doable.
ghouse 12y ago
And up to 10,000 units in San Francisco are vacant because they think it's unfair. http://kalw.org/post/growing-number-san-francisco-landlords-not-renting http://kalw.org/post/growing-number-san-francisco-landlords-...
- vertex-four 12y ago
  If those landlords don't have clear plans to use the property, that is decidedly irrational.
  - ghshephard 12y ago
    Highly unlikely that 10,000 landlords with an extraordinary desire to maximize their return are being "irrational". If you rent out the property in San Francisco, you effectively lose control of what you can do with it. By not renting it out, you maintain control, and you can rent to family, make use of it yourself. I'm guessing that airbnb also is an attractive option now to get around the price-control laws.
    - vertex-four 12y ago
      Renting it out to family, making use of it yourself, and renting very-short-term using airbnb, are not leaving the building vacant.
      - bigiain 12y ago
        <cynical thought> But I suspect renting it to family/AirBnB - and not declaring the income - ends up looking very much like "leaving the building vacant" on official records...
    - simoncion 12y ago
      If you rent out property for residential use anywhere in the US, you do lose control of what you can do with it, outside the bounds of your leasing agreement and local law regarding the topic. Most jurisdictions recognize the need for a person to have a safe, personal, private space in order to have a happy and productive life. It is a recognition of this fact that causes most places to agree that a man's home is his castle, even if he is renting his home from another.
harryh 12y ago
You are totally correct that landlords have this option. People who are opposed to rent control argue, quite convincingly, that things like the situation you describe lead to bad outcomes for the community at large. A dwelling sitting unoccupied because an owner doesn't want to subject themselves to rent control laws decreases supply and increases rents for everyone.
- vertex-four 12y ago
  If it's sitting unoccupied and the owner has no plans to do anything with it, the owner is being irrational. If the owner does have plans to do something with it, they have to kick the tenant out, meaning that any additional supply as a result of renting out these houses is short-term, thus just pushing the problem back a bit. You'd still have to deal with the problem in the future.
  - harryh 12y ago
    1) Maybe they don't have plans to do anything with it today, but they don't want to get locked into renting to a tenant for decades. That's not irrational. 2) No, that's not just pushing the problem back a bit. That is wrong. There will always be owners who want do do something with their property somewhere down the road. If you allow them to rent it out in the meantime (without getting locked into a forever contract) you can permanently increase the total rental stock in a community.
    - x0x0 12y ago
      Owners may evict a tenant in an owner move in. There are a variety of regulations that you can get caught up in, designed to protect from abuse by commercial landlords, but practically speaking, if you own a single building and wish to evict rent controlled tenants live in one of the units, you'll be able to. Your objections continue to demonstrate an unfamiliarity with rent control in sf. @harryh: your complaint is rent control prevents owners from renting out their property (while doing something in the meantime) without getting locking into a forever rental. For small landlords, it does not, at least not in this enumerated (most likely the most important) instance. As a small landlord, most importantly of a single unit, you may rent it out as you wish and move back in later, evicting a rent controlled tenant if necessary.

If they think it's unfair, they could just... not rent their buildings out. There's plenty of buildings in the US that don't come under rent control laws that they could buy and rent out.

SilasX 12y ago

And if you're fine with the supply contracting further in already-choked markets, then that works! If not ...

vertex-four 12y ago
Well, obviously, given that we're discussing rental in a rent-control city, it doesn't entirely kill off rental.
- SilasX 12y ago
  "Not entirely killing off the rental market" is a pretty low bar to clear :-P

cookiecaper 12y ago

Landlords have the right to change their mind when it comes time for lease renewal. You're arguing that landlords should be forced to always rent their property to the same tenant once they begin. That's how ownership, not rental, works. Rentals are for a limited time by definition.

vertex-four 12y ago
> Rentals are for a limited time by definition. I know people (in fact, every branch of my family, along with many of my friends) who have rented their entire lives, because they can't own - they've never been able to amass enough capital or convince someone else to lend them it. Should they be uprooted every year (or more often) because someone wants to make a bit more money? Rentals are whatever the combination of the contract and the local law say they are, by definition.
- mod 12y ago
  > Should they be uprooted every year (or more often) because someone wants to make a bit more money? No, they shouldn't be, but that's not really the issue. The issue is: should landlords be legally allowed to uproot them? My answer is a decisive yes. For whatever the reason, they should be able to not renew a contract once it expires. I don't see why laws should be in place to restrict how much someone makes. Nobody has to have that particular apartment, or live in that particular place, etc. There's always options.
  - vertex-four 12y ago
    > No, they shouldn't be, but that's not really the issue. Yes, it really is. Which does the most harm - uprooting people and families every year, forcing them to deal with the stress of moving and finding new life patterns which match wherever they live now, or disallowing landlords from making a bit more money? EDIT: s/allowing/disallowing/
    - mod 12y ago
      I guess you mean "disallowing landlords to make more money." Again I think that's a red herring. There are plenty of reasons an owner might want to remove a tenant outside of profit. But again, it's not the issue--this is really straight to the heart of property rights. Someone owns a property, and by and large, should be able to do what they want with that property. Living on someone else's property is part of the risk of renting. Similar to working for someone else--would you also argue an employer should have to keep paying a worker who is underperforming (or any of a litany of legitimate reasons), because if they didn't that worker might have to deal with the stress of moving & finding new life patterns?
      - vertex-four 12y ago
        Property rights only exist because of the law, otherwise, in general, property amounts to "what you can personally protect from people using force". It makes sense that alternate property models from "full ownership" can be implemented without the world crumbling. As I say in another comment, when you rent out a house to a tenant, you already lose certain property rights, at least while the tenant is living there. You can't write a contract which allows you to keep them, by law. You usually even have certain duties to the tenant, as much as landlords like to shirk these. This is the same in many developed countries, and the world's yet to fall apart for it.
cma 12y ago
In a rent controlled area, they don't have that right, by definition. Rent controlled rentals aren't for a limited time, with various exceptions, by definition.
- vertex-four 12y ago
  Yes, they do have that right. They can use the building themselves, rent it to someone more trusted (family/friends), or sell it. They don't have to rent it out in the first place, so the building never has to come under rent control.
  - cma 12y ago
    Yes, you technically can rent it for a limited time of zero, meaning they do have the right to rent it for a limited time, in some weird mathematical field theory of rental treating that as the additive identity element or something.
    - simoncion 12y ago
      It's those exceptions that you glossed over in your initial comment that cause your assertion to be incorrect. Landlords have a variety of legal options to terminate a rent-controlled lease. Those options are almost always less palatable than continuing the lease. This is by design, and -in areas with obscene housing supply issues- good for society. Housing security is far more important for societal well-being than the fullness of a landlord's wallet.
bigiain 12y ago
On the other hand, the owner of this building would have benefitted from the intended effect of rent control on the price of the property when they bought it. There's no doubt that a rent controlled apartment building would fetch less at sale time than a non-rent-controlled equivalent. Sure, landlords "have the right to change their mind", but only within the legal/regulatory framework in which they've chosen to invest. But hey, "Uber, but for residential rentals". There's clearly _some_ people who'd benefit from doing end-runs around the rules by which everybody _else_ plays... (Just think for a minute about how surge pricing for apartment rentals in SF would look... All the "locals" moving out to Oakland or Pleasanton while WWDC or Google IO is on, and moving back in again during Burningman...)
- kelnos 12y ago
  I think there's actually even more to the comparison you've made than you've said: the reason Uber is generally ok, even though it does make an end-run around some transportation regulation, is that the existence of Uber doesn't take anything away from anyone. Taxis still exist, people can ride in them. If existing taxi drivers are losing business, there are avenues they can take to recover that business (often imperfectly). Making an end-run around housing laws almost unilaterally benefits an already-privileged group (land owners), at the expense of others.
kelnos 12y ago
Rentals are for a limited time by definition. If you're going to trot out an absolutist term like "by definition", I'd like to inform you that "limited time" is by no means a condition for being defined as "rent": http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/rent http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/rent I know that sounds a bit pedantic and splitting hairs, but if you're going to base your argument on re-defining what words mean... that's a bit of a problem.
- mod 12y ago
  "A bit" is an understatement. You're overtly, obnoxiously pedantic when you reference a single dictionary and ignore common usage, particularly in this thread. Yes, I know, that sounds harsh, but "doing your homework" is a necessary precondition for being a pedant. Check another dictionary and it's part of the definition: http://www.thefreedictionary.com/rent http://www.thefreedictionary.com/rent (verb, 2) In common use, it's always in conjunction with a temporary agreement. You don't "rent (a home) forever." GP didn't make up some new usage to further his argument.
  - kelnos 12y ago
    Touché, though I don't agree with you on the "common usage" bit. People do in fact "rent (a home) forever", and from what I've gathered it's not that uncommon, at least for cases where "forever" is a person's adult life span. Even considering the temporary case, what does "temporary" mean? 1 year? 2? 5? 10? Where's the cut-off where you've rented for "too long" and it's ok to be kicked out of your home? Even if you can pick a number for that yourself, I hope you can agree that others might have different numbers, and that the selection of such a number is somewhat arbitrary. I think the fact that all of this is a problem proves the point that people do expect to be able to rent a home for some value of "forever" (or even some value of "temporary") that is larger than a landlord's profit motive would allow. Look, if I want to rent a power saw from a hardware store that offers rentals, me keeping that saw for a long time isn't a problem, assuming I'm continuing to make payments[1]. If the hardware store finds there are more people wanting saws, and they're running out, they'll just buy more; there's a ready supply. The same thing doesn't work for housing because land is a limited public resource. In SF's case it's even more limited due to the arbitrary new-construction planning process and disappointing level of NIMBYism in the city that means we can never keep up with demand, Mayor Lee's housing initiatives notwithstanding. This is why real property law doesn't give absolute power to the owner of that property. There are rules. You can't discriminate based on protected classes, for one. Rent control is another rule. The Ellis act is yet another. These rules aren't perfect, but they do tend to protect people who would otherwise be at the short end of a very unpleasant landlord-tenant power dynamic. [1] It might be stupid for me to do so, financially, since I'd fairly quickly pay more than the cost of a new saw, but let's assume that, like housing in SF, the cost of a new saw is several hundred times the cost to rent it. This also serves to point out that owning a house is financially impossible for many people, while renting -- up until recently -- was much more doable.

ghouse 12y ago

And up to 10,000 units in San Francisco are vacant because they think it's unfair. http://kalw.org/post/growing-number-san-francisco-landlords-not-renting http://kalw.org/post/growing-number-san-francisco-landlords-...

vertex-four 12y ago
If those landlords don't have clear plans to use the property, that is decidedly irrational.
- ghshephard 12y ago
  Highly unlikely that 10,000 landlords with an extraordinary desire to maximize their return are being "irrational". If you rent out the property in San Francisco, you effectively lose control of what you can do with it. By not renting it out, you maintain control, and you can rent to family, make use of it yourself. I'm guessing that airbnb also is an attractive option now to get around the price-control laws.
  - vertex-four 12y ago
    Renting it out to family, making use of it yourself, and renting very-short-term using airbnb, are not leaving the building vacant.
    - bigiain 12y ago
      <cynical thought> But I suspect renting it to family/AirBnB - and not declaring the income - ends up looking very much like "leaving the building vacant" on official records...
  - simoncion 12y ago
    If you rent out property for residential use anywhere in the US, you do lose control of what you can do with it, outside the bounds of your leasing agreement and local law regarding the topic. Most jurisdictions recognize the need for a person to have a safe, personal, private space in order to have a happy and productive life. It is a recognition of this fact that causes most places to agree that a man's home is his castle, even if he is renting his home from another.

harryh 12y ago

You are totally correct that landlords have this option. People who are opposed to rent control argue, quite convincingly, that things like the situation you describe lead to bad outcomes for the community at large. A dwelling sitting unoccupied because an owner doesn't want to subject themselves to rent control laws decreases supply and increases rents for everyone.

vertex-four 12y ago
If it's sitting unoccupied and the owner has no plans to do anything with it, the owner is being irrational. If the owner does have plans to do something with it, they have to kick the tenant out, meaning that any additional supply as a result of renting out these houses is short-term, thus just pushing the problem back a bit. You'd still have to deal with the problem in the future.
- harryh 12y ago
  1) Maybe they don't have plans to do anything with it today, but they don't want to get locked into renting to a tenant for decades. That's not irrational. 2) No, that's not just pushing the problem back a bit. That is wrong. There will always be owners who want do do something with their property somewhere down the road. If you allow them to rent it out in the meantime (without getting locked into a forever contract) you can permanently increase the total rental stock in a community.
  - x0x0 12y ago
    Owners may evict a tenant in an owner move in. There are a variety of regulations that you can get caught up in, designed to protect from abuse by commercial landlords, but practically speaking, if you own a single building and wish to evict rent controlled tenants live in one of the units, you'll be able to. Your objections continue to demonstrate an unfamiliarity with rent control in sf. @harryh: your complaint is rent control prevents owners from renting out their property (while doing something in the meantime) without getting locking into a forever rental. For small landlords, it does not, at least not in this enumerated (most likely the most important) instance. As a small landlord, most importantly of a single unit, you may rent it out as you wish and move back in later, evicting a rent controlled tenant if necessary.