20 ms·

OTOH, how much can you restrict the property owner? What if the other unit needed to be knocked down for a reason other than to get rid of rent control? Would i

OTOH, how much can you restrict the property owner? What if the other unit needed to be knocked down for a reason other than to get rid of rent control? Would it be OK for the law to tell the owner to fix it some other way? What if both units were destroyed in a natural disaster and a new structure had to be built from nothing? Is that still rent-controlled? Also, is rent control even a good idea? In the short term, it obviously protects a renter from the market running away from them. In the long term it seems to create artificial conditions which eventually blow up in everyone's face. Imagine a plan where the current renters had a viable alternative. Now drop all rent control laws and let the market correct itself. Lower income renters move out, higher income families move in. Rent goes up higher. Newly moved in renters realize that they are paying 10x as much as the rest of the country, leave. Rent goes down. The market has corrected itself and all is well. What am I missing?

charlesdm 12y ago
If you own the building, i'd say you should be free to do what you want. Just because you rented out a unit 5 years ago doesn't mean you want to rent it out forever. You own the building after all. Imagine a building with 20+ units, you'd never be able to clear it out. But, that doesn't make it a fun process to go through for a renter. It sucks. Couldn't the owner just ask the person who is renting the unit to move out in a reasonable amount of time? That seems like the ethical thing to do.
- IgorPartola 12y ago
  I can't imagine someone going through this trouble instead of just asking. It is a dick move, for sure. I just don't see GGP's point about making this specific action illegal as the solution. Seems to me that it would the just complicate things and in the end negatively affect everyone.
  - clarky07 12y ago
    We only see one side here. perhaps they did ask nicely, and the renter said no.
    - tizzdogg 12y ago
      It is fairly standard practice in San Francisco for landlords to offer high tens of thousands of dollars to renters for them to move. I have a friend who paid a tenant $60k to move out. This allows them to avoid the complications and restrictions of the Ellis act or owner move-in (notably restrictions on condo conversion).
- alistairSH 12y ago
  > Couldn't the owner just ask the person who is renting the unit to move out in a reasonable amount of time? Assuming the original $2145 is below market, the answer would be no, wouldn't it? Or, rather, they could ask, but the tenant would never willingly leave, as they are paying below market.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
- DrStalker 12y ago
  Why can't they tell the tennet to move out? In Australia residential leases have a fixed term (usually 12 months) and after that become month-to-month, and the owner can ask you to leave with 90 days notice when you're not under a contract.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
  - charlesdm 12y ago
    They did, in a hostile way. Then again, maybe the tenant refused to move out.
    - forrestthewoods 12y ago
      Someone paying significantly below market rate is almost certainly going to refuse to move out.
  - refurb 12y ago
    In SF the only real way to kick someone out of a rent controlled unit is via an Ellis Act eviction. The allows the owner to take the building off the market. Issue is, you need to pay a substantial fee to the tenant (many thousands if they've been there a long time) AND you cannot rent the unit out again for 5 years.
    - dredmorbius 12y ago
      s/can rent/cannot rent/
    - zobzu 12y ago
      it actually sounds fair, doesn't it?
      - charlesdm 12y ago
        Sarcasm? How does that sound fair for the owner. Not being able to rent out your apartment for 5(!) years is ridiculous.
- curun1r 12y ago
  > Couldn't the owner just ask the person who is renting the unit to move out in a reasonable amount of time? California has a provision for doing this. It's called the Ellis Act and San Francisco's regulations for Ellis Act evictions require payment of $5k-$15k + $3k per senior/disabled tenant. This remodel + rent increase seems a transparent attempt to circumvent that law. Whether legal or not would require a lawyer to weigh in.
nostrademons 12y ago
Transaction costs. Moving is not free: at a minimum, there are search costs to find a new apartment and moving costs to pack all your stuff up and move it around. Very often, there are also storage needs, and if you move non-locally, there are jobsearch and job termination costs, recruiting costs by their employers, relocation costs, etc. Many of these are externalities - they're born by people who are not party to the transaction itself. For example, if one of your best employees is priced out of the city where your office is, then you need to find a replacement in a hurry. Replacing a key employee can sometimes cost as much as their yearly salary (this is why the recruiting industry exists, and why startups can get "acquihired" for a million or so per engineer). If the employee has a long tenure and lots of domain knowledge, they may actually be irreplaceable, and their loss could permanently damage the business. The cynic in me wonders if the reason we have rent control isn't to protect tenants, it's because one powerful constituency (employers) is pitted against another (landlords) and the former is currently more powerful.
- jsprogrammer 12y ago
  >Transaction costs. Agreed, the tenant likely has many bases for recovering any and all costs associated with a move. When did the owner provide notice that they would attempt to evade rent-control? The tenant has a reasonable assumption that a rent-controlled lease will remain rent-controlled indefinitely.
- 3pt14159 12y ago
  Then a better policy would be to price these negative externalities into a single metric that is a multiple of the rent. Want to raise rent by more than max(inflation, 3%)? Offer the renter 2.5x the months rent to leave instead. My cofounder lives in a place that is only $900 / mo with his girlfriend in Toronto because she's been renting there for forever. They are essentially trapped there because their rent would easily double if they moved somewhere else. Meanwhile the landlord doesn't take care of the place at all because there is absolutely no incentive to until they move out. Market warping practices should be eliminated.
  - _delirium 12y ago
vegardx 12y ago
The market might correct itself, but are you really sure that gentrification is good for the community and people in general? This is basically what is happening. Not everyone can easily pack up and just move. People are social beings, they have commitments, children and probably a place where they have some sort of personal connection.
- toephu2 12y ago
  How can we get rid of the homeless people in SF? I don't think anyone likes them and they contribute not only nothing to society but actually a negative amount. They are an eyesore and a burden to the community.
  - toomuchtodo 12y ago
    > They are an eyesore and a burden to the community. The same could be said about SF's tech workers at $social_network_of_the_month. Just because you think you have value, does not make it so. People matter, period.
  - Frondo 12y ago
    Homeless people are also human beings, and worthy of care, compassion, and generosity because of that fact, no matter the cause of their homelessness.
    - Kalium 12y ago
      Abstractly, yes, you are absolutely correct in every detail. In practice, how much money should that be expected to translate to? From what I've seen, SF could dump literally it's entire yearly budget at offering care, compassion, and generosity to the homeless without the homeless population shrinking.
  - vegardx 12y ago
    I'm not sure how that is related to gentrification. And last time I checked, people are not homeless out of choice, but from socioeconomic reasons, mental health problems and just bad luck. I'd argue that rent control and housing stability can go a long way to mitigate those problems in the first place. And you might be partially right, nobody likes homeless people. But for very different reasons. I don't like that society lets people fall, almost permanently, on the side line.
will_hughes 12y ago
> What if the other unit needed to be knocked down for a reason other than to get rid of rent control? Let the owner give adequate notice to vacate (where I live it's 60 days notice without cause). But the rent-control limitation stays on that land parcel for some period of time after a new building is constructed on the site. Don't want to rent it? No problems. > Newly moved in renters realize that they are paying 10x as much as the rest of the country, leave. Rent goes down People have a limited ability to live a certain distance away from work - an hour, sure - two, ... okay but that's pushing it. Three? Well now half your waking day is spent commuting. Four? You're probably not driving because you need to sleep. Property owners who're assholes will continue to push rental prices up (which is what we're seeing in OPs example) to "what the market will bear". Meaning people who're willing to live in some shithole on ramen and minimal lighting and heat for >half their wage can live within a reasonable distance of their workplace. All so some asshole (which is probably a company), can make more money. Great for the rich.
- clarky07 12y ago
  Why are all landlords assholes again? Why is making a profit evil? Do you sell your services for half of what they are worth just to be nice?
  - jsprogrammer 12y ago
    By definition, profit is extracting more than the 'worth' of something.
    - harryh 12y ago
      False. In reality, in most transactions, both parties profit due to the fact that there is no fixed concept of "worth." The apple that you bought from your grocer for 50 cents was valued at 40 cents by him and 60 cents by you.
      - jsprogrammer 12y ago
        Why would I value an apple higher than what a grocer is willing to sell? I wouldn't.
impendia 12y ago
> Rent goes down. The market has corrected itself and all is well. What am I missing? You're missing the fact that rent won't go down -- at least not by much, because living in San Francisco will remain desirable for enough people who are willing to pay very high rents. Only the very wealthy, or those who bought in a long time ago, would be able to live in San Francisco. Of course, this is increasingly the case anyway. And one could make the case that this is an acceptable outcome. I (like many) believe that it's unacceptable, but this is debatable.
- brc 12y ago
  But that's a problem with supply in the market, not a reason to keep rent control. Fix the supply and the rent takes care of itself.
- IgorPartola 12y ago
  So the SF is just a very expensive place to live. So is NYC, Tokyo, and London. Whether you consider these outcomes acceptable or not, it seems they are inevitable. By keeping rent control, you are actually leading people into believing they can afford to live in a place that is poised to prove them out one way or another. I personally cannot fathom why one place can be son much more expensive than another. Sure, there is a price differential, but is SF really that much better than Brimingham, or Durham, or Albany? Besides, if you want to be the master of your destiny and put a root down, buy. Renting is a tool for when you cannot afford to buy yet, or for when you are on the move. It's greatest strength is that it lets you up and move. I never understood why you would rent the same place for more than a few years. If you plan on staying, buy. If you cannot afford to buy, why are you staying in this place?
  - Daishiman 12y ago
    > I personally cannot fathom why one place can be son much more expensive than another. Sure, there is a price differential, but is SF really that much better than Brimingham, or Durham, or Albany? If you're a certain type of person, yes. Miles better. You have rows and rows of blocks catering to specialty commerces, astounding, world-class food for ridiculously reasonable prices that can't be obtained anywhere else, a huge amount of access to employers and jobs that are also nonexistant outside of a few large cities. You don't need car ownership; you're trivially close to international airports, and the cultural scene is, once again, not available in smaller cities. Having spent almost all my life in large cities, the suburbs are just terrible boring, even if your place to live is 5x bigger. Obviously if you like the outdoors that situation may be very different, but not all suburbs and small cities have access to outdoors recreation, and not all big cities are that far away from excellent parks.
wpietri 12y ago
What you're missing is that housing is not a normal good. Sure, there is a housing marketplace, which can provide some correction. But houses are also homes. People are born in them. People die in them. They love them, they cherish them, they fight for them. There's a lot of truth in the saying, "Home is where the heart is." What you're missing in that scenario is the large number of people who are displaced not just from their fungible, replaceable housing unit, but their home, their neighborhood, their family, and perhaps their city and their job. Note also there are substantial class issues in the sentence, "Lower income renters move out, higher income families move in." The notion that poor people should take it on the chin because rich people covet their homes is not politically neutral. One could just as well say that it's the rich people, more able to cope, that should bear the burden of market fluctuations. So I don't think, "is rent control even a good idea" is the right question. It's more like, "Are there more effective ways than rent control to reduce the harm?"
- escherize 12y ago
  I don't understand this argument. _Quality_ housing seems to me, to be a normal good, because when income increases the demand for such housing increases. Even crappy places in SF seem to be quality housing. Whether or not there are class issues, or your house is sentimental is irrelevant. Edit: typo
  - wpietri 12y ago
    Apparently "normal good" is an economic technical term, and apparently you are using that technical definition here and not the normal use of "normal". I have no idea why you'd do that; as you point out, that technical term bears no relation to what I'm talking about.
    - cwyers 12y ago
      Words have meanings. In the context of a discussion of economic activity, you really have "no idea" why someone would assume you were using the economic meaning of "normal good?
kemiller 12y ago
On strictly economic terms, I agree with you. The trouble with the plan you describe is that essentially guts neighborhoods. The very vibrant, interesting neighborhoods that draw people to San Francisco in the first place. By the time the correction occurs, the networks of lower-income people that tend to be the bedrock of the more interesting urban neighborhoods have been disrupted, often fatally. That ship may have sailed, rent control or no.
- jusben1369 12y ago
  The trouble though with this view is it always acts as though neighborhoods are static and unchanging. But any large City that's more than 100 years old sees neighborhoods rise and fall economically and/or change dramatically in a social sense over time. Sometimes for the worse, sometimes for the better. When you "protect" these neighborhoods with artificial controls you just end up extorting all kinds of outcomes which are never healthy. The tenant on this FB post is like a Frog in slowly heating water with no sense of temperature. By the time she realizes what's happening it's too late and she's seriously stuck. If the rents in her area were going up 10 - 20% or more every year (and hers along with it) the shock would be less and she'd plan ahead to move.
jackmaney 12y ago
"...and let the market correct itself." No. This is the philosophy that put our economy in the shitter in the first place. More government regulations, please.
- remarkEon 12y ago
  Please don't conflate the market calamity of 2008 with this issue. The lesson we should have learned from the housing crisis, and all the financial derivative wizardry therein, is not "more government regulations NOW" - it's sensible regulation when necessary. Rent control is neither.
bch 12y ago
> What if the other unit needed to be knocked down for a reason other than to get rid of rent control? Knock it down and don't jack the rent ~300%?
brc 12y ago
Rent control is a shocking idea that makes a small claque of renters rich at the expense of everyone else. It's obscene. Everyone blames the owners or some lawyer when a protected tenant becomes unprotected. The blame lies in the law that built up an artificial wall around the tenant and protected them from the market. Rent control creates shortages, sub-standard properties and illegal tenancies. It should be abolished anywhere it exists.
- Lazare 12y ago
  "Swedish economist (and socialist) Assar Lindbeck asserted, 'In many cases rent control appears to be the most efficient technique presently known to destroy a city—except for bombing.'" Rent control is one of the small number of policies that economists on the left and right are essentially unanimous (93% in a survey of US economists; 95% in a survey of Canadian ones) in agreeing are always harmful, because they reduce both the quality and quantity of housing available. It's not even some vague hypothetical either: In the linked story, the rent control laws have resulted in the conversion of a multi-tenant building into a single-family dwelling, which is a reduction in the number of housing units in the city. A reduction in the quantity supplied will, of course, lead to an increase in the equalibrium price. And the high equilibrium price is both why Follingstad's eviction is so painful, and why they were (effectively) evicted in the first place. It's a textbook example of Why Rent Control Hurts Everyone, in one compact little story.
  - ageek123 12y ago
    Indeed, even Paul Krugman thinks rent control is a bad idea: http://www.nytimes.com/2000/06/07/opinion/reckonings-a-rent-affair.html http://www.nytimes.com/2000/06/07/opinion/reckonings-a-rent-...
  - dnr 12y ago
    It seems likely that the owners will "change their mind" and decide to convert the "storage area" back into an apartment once the tenant is gone and they can rent at market rate again.
    - 12y ago
kailuowang 12y ago
Does any economist disagree that free market is more efficient than a price regulated market, i.e. provide more people with more bousing? Its not just about the liquidity at the demand side, at the supply side, rent control makes it harder for market to create more supply to meet the demand. From a human right perspective, I am not sure I agree that a person have the right to live at the same place forever as long as he maintain the same income just because he used to live there. Maybe a couple of years but it shouldn't be forever.
vsl 12y ago
> Also, is rent control even a good idea? Let me put it this way: the rents dropped sharply when rent regulation finally ended in my country. After 15 years of doomsayer horror stories from the left how unregulated rents would make the poor homeless, it turned out, within a year, that the exact opposite was happening.

charlesdm 12y ago

If you own the building, i'd say you should be free to do what you want. Just because you rented out a unit 5 years ago doesn't mean you want to rent it out forever. You own the building after all. Imagine a building with 20+ units, you'd never be able to clear it out. But, that doesn't make it a fun process to go through for a renter. It sucks. Couldn't the owner just ask the person who is renting the unit to move out in a reasonable amount of time? That seems like the ethical thing to do.

IgorPartola 12y ago
I can't imagine someone going through this trouble instead of just asking. It is a dick move, for sure. I just don't see GGP's point about making this specific action illegal as the solution. Seems to me that it would the just complicate things and in the end negatively affect everyone.
- clarky07 12y ago
  We only see one side here. perhaps they did ask nicely, and the renter said no.
  - tizzdogg 12y ago
    It is fairly standard practice in San Francisco for landlords to offer high tens of thousands of dollars to renters for them to move. I have a friend who paid a tenant $60k to move out. This allows them to avoid the complications and restrictions of the Ellis act or owner move-in (notably restrictions on condo conversion).
alistairSH 12y ago
> Couldn't the owner just ask the person who is renting the unit to move out in a reasonable amount of time? Assuming the original $2145 is below market, the answer would be no, wouldn't it? Or, rather, they could ask, but the tenant would never willingly leave, as they are paying below market.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
DrStalker 12y ago
Why can't they tell the tennet to move out? In Australia residential leases have a fixed term (usually 12 months) and after that become month-to-month, and the owner can ask you to leave with 90 days notice when you're not under a contract.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- charlesdm 12y ago
  They did, in a hostile way. Then again, maybe the tenant refused to move out.
  - forrestthewoods 12y ago
    Someone paying significantly below market rate is almost certainly going to refuse to move out.
- refurb 12y ago
  In SF the only real way to kick someone out of a rent controlled unit is via an Ellis Act eviction. The allows the owner to take the building off the market. Issue is, you need to pay a substantial fee to the tenant (many thousands if they've been there a long time) AND you cannot rent the unit out again for 5 years.
  - dredmorbius 12y ago
    s/can rent/cannot rent/
  - zobzu 12y ago
    it actually sounds fair, doesn't it?
    - charlesdm 12y ago
      Sarcasm? How does that sound fair for the owner. Not being able to rent out your apartment for 5(!) years is ridiculous.
curun1r 12y ago
> Couldn't the owner just ask the person who is renting the unit to move out in a reasonable amount of time? California has a provision for doing this. It's called the Ellis Act and San Francisco's regulations for Ellis Act evictions require payment of $5k-$15k + $3k per senior/disabled tenant. This remodel + rent increase seems a transparent attempt to circumvent that law. Whether legal or not would require a lawyer to weigh in.

nostrademons 12y ago

Transaction costs. Moving is not free: at a minimum, there are search costs to find a new apartment and moving costs to pack all your stuff up and move it around. Very often, there are also storage needs, and if you move non-locally, there are jobsearch and job termination costs, recruiting costs by their employers, relocation costs, etc. Many of these are externalities - they're born by people who are not party to the transaction itself. For example, if one of your best employees is priced out of the city where your office is, then you need to find a replacement in a hurry. Replacing a key employee can sometimes cost as much as their yearly salary (this is why the recruiting industry exists, and why startups can get "acquihired" for a million or so per engineer). If the employee has a long tenure and lots of domain knowledge, they may actually be irreplaceable, and their loss could permanently damage the business. The cynic in me wonders if the reason we have rent control isn't to protect tenants, it's because one powerful constituency (employers) is pitted against another (landlords) and the former is currently more powerful.

jsprogrammer 12y ago
>Transaction costs. Agreed, the tenant likely has many bases for recovering any and all costs associated with a move. When did the owner provide notice that they would attempt to evade rent-control? The tenant has a reasonable assumption that a rent-controlled lease will remain rent-controlled indefinitely.
3pt14159 12y ago
Then a better policy would be to price these negative externalities into a single metric that is a multiple of the rent. Want to raise rent by more than max(inflation, 3%)? Offer the renter 2.5x the months rent to leave instead. My cofounder lives in a place that is only $900 / mo with his girlfriend in Toronto because she's been renting there for forever. They are essentially trapped there because their rent would easily double if they moved somewhere else. Meanwhile the landlord doesn't take care of the place at all because there is absolutely no incentive to until they move out. Market warping practices should be eliminated.
- _delirium 12y ago

vegardx 12y ago

The market might correct itself, but are you really sure that gentrification is good for the community and people in general? This is basically what is happening. Not everyone can easily pack up and just move. People are social beings, they have commitments, children and probably a place where they have some sort of personal connection.

toephu2 12y ago
How can we get rid of the homeless people in SF? I don't think anyone likes them and they contribute not only nothing to society but actually a negative amount. They are an eyesore and a burden to the community.
- toomuchtodo 12y ago
  > They are an eyesore and a burden to the community. The same could be said about SF's tech workers at $social_network_of_the_month. Just because you think you have value, does not make it so. People matter, period.
- Frondo 12y ago
  Homeless people are also human beings, and worthy of care, compassion, and generosity because of that fact, no matter the cause of their homelessness.
  - Kalium 12y ago
    Abstractly, yes, you are absolutely correct in every detail. In practice, how much money should that be expected to translate to? From what I've seen, SF could dump literally it's entire yearly budget at offering care, compassion, and generosity to the homeless without the homeless population shrinking.
- vegardx 12y ago
  I'm not sure how that is related to gentrification. And last time I checked, people are not homeless out of choice, but from socioeconomic reasons, mental health problems and just bad luck. I'd argue that rent control and housing stability can go a long way to mitigate those problems in the first place. And you might be partially right, nobody likes homeless people. But for very different reasons. I don't like that society lets people fall, almost permanently, on the side line.

will_hughes 12y ago

> What if the other unit needed to be knocked down for a reason other than to get rid of rent control? Let the owner give adequate notice to vacate (where I live it's 60 days notice without cause). But the rent-control limitation stays on that land parcel for some period of time after a new building is constructed on the site. Don't want to rent it? No problems. > Newly moved in renters realize that they are paying 10x as much as the rest of the country, leave. Rent goes down People have a limited ability to live a certain distance away from work - an hour, sure - two, ... okay but that's pushing it. Three? Well now half your waking day is spent commuting. Four? You're probably not driving because you need to sleep. Property owners who're assholes will continue to push rental prices up (which is what we're seeing in OPs example) to "what the market will bear". Meaning people who're willing to live in some shithole on ramen and minimal lighting and heat for >half their wage can live within a reasonable distance of their workplace. All so some asshole (which is probably a company), can make more money. Great for the rich.

clarky07 12y ago
Why are all landlords assholes again? Why is making a profit evil? Do you sell your services for half of what they are worth just to be nice?
- jsprogrammer 12y ago
  By definition, profit is extracting more than the 'worth' of something.
  - harryh 12y ago
    False. In reality, in most transactions, both parties profit due to the fact that there is no fixed concept of "worth." The apple that you bought from your grocer for 50 cents was valued at 40 cents by him and 60 cents by you.
    - jsprogrammer 12y ago
      Why would I value an apple higher than what a grocer is willing to sell? I wouldn't.

impendia 12y ago

> Rent goes down. The market has corrected itself and all is well. What am I missing? You're missing the fact that rent won't go down -- at least not by much, because living in San Francisco will remain desirable for enough people who are willing to pay very high rents. Only the very wealthy, or those who bought in a long time ago, would be able to live in San Francisco. Of course, this is increasingly the case anyway. And one could make the case that this is an acceptable outcome. I (like many) believe that it's unacceptable, but this is debatable.

brc 12y ago
But that's a problem with supply in the market, not a reason to keep rent control. Fix the supply and the rent takes care of itself.
IgorPartola 12y ago
So the SF is just a very expensive place to live. So is NYC, Tokyo, and London. Whether you consider these outcomes acceptable or not, it seems they are inevitable. By keeping rent control, you are actually leading people into believing they can afford to live in a place that is poised to prove them out one way or another. I personally cannot fathom why one place can be son much more expensive than another. Sure, there is a price differential, but is SF really that much better than Brimingham, or Durham, or Albany? Besides, if you want to be the master of your destiny and put a root down, buy. Renting is a tool for when you cannot afford to buy yet, or for when you are on the move. It's greatest strength is that it lets you up and move. I never understood why you would rent the same place for more than a few years. If you plan on staying, buy. If you cannot afford to buy, why are you staying in this place?
- Daishiman 12y ago
  > I personally cannot fathom why one place can be son much more expensive than another. Sure, there is a price differential, but is SF really that much better than Brimingham, or Durham, or Albany? If you're a certain type of person, yes. Miles better. You have rows and rows of blocks catering to specialty commerces, astounding, world-class food for ridiculously reasonable prices that can't be obtained anywhere else, a huge amount of access to employers and jobs that are also nonexistant outside of a few large cities. You don't need car ownership; you're trivially close to international airports, and the cultural scene is, once again, not available in smaller cities. Having spent almost all my life in large cities, the suburbs are just terrible boring, even if your place to live is 5x bigger. Obviously if you like the outdoors that situation may be very different, but not all suburbs and small cities have access to outdoors recreation, and not all big cities are that far away from excellent parks.

wpietri 12y ago

What you're missing is that housing is not a normal good. Sure, there is a housing marketplace, which can provide some correction. But houses are also homes. People are born in them. People die in them. They love them, they cherish them, they fight for them. There's a lot of truth in the saying, "Home is where the heart is." What you're missing in that scenario is the large number of people who are displaced not just from their fungible, replaceable housing unit, but their home, their neighborhood, their family, and perhaps their city and their job. Note also there are substantial class issues in the sentence, "Lower income renters move out, higher income families move in." The notion that poor people should take it on the chin because rich people covet their homes is not politically neutral. One could just as well say that it's the rich people, more able to cope, that should bear the burden of market fluctuations. So I don't think, "is rent control even a good idea" is the right question. It's more like, "Are there more effective ways than rent control to reduce the harm?"

escherize 12y ago
I don't understand this argument. _Quality_ housing seems to me, to be a normal good, because when income increases the demand for such housing increases. Even crappy places in SF seem to be quality housing. Whether or not there are class issues, or your house is sentimental is irrelevant. Edit: typo
- wpietri 12y ago
  Apparently "normal good" is an economic technical term, and apparently you are using that technical definition here and not the normal use of "normal". I have no idea why you'd do that; as you point out, that technical term bears no relation to what I'm talking about.
  - cwyers 12y ago
    Words have meanings. In the context of a discussion of economic activity, you really have "no idea" why someone would assume you were using the economic meaning of "normal good?

kemiller 12y ago

On strictly economic terms, I agree with you. The trouble with the plan you describe is that essentially guts neighborhoods. The very vibrant, interesting neighborhoods that draw people to San Francisco in the first place. By the time the correction occurs, the networks of lower-income people that tend to be the bedrock of the more interesting urban neighborhoods have been disrupted, often fatally. That ship may have sailed, rent control or no.

jusben1369 12y ago
The trouble though with this view is it always acts as though neighborhoods are static and unchanging. But any large City that's more than 100 years old sees neighborhoods rise and fall economically and/or change dramatically in a social sense over time. Sometimes for the worse, sometimes for the better. When you "protect" these neighborhoods with artificial controls you just end up extorting all kinds of outcomes which are never healthy. The tenant on this FB post is like a Frog in slowly heating water with no sense of temperature. By the time she realizes what's happening it's too late and she's seriously stuck. If the rents in her area were going up 10 - 20% or more every year (and hers along with it) the shock would be less and she'd plan ahead to move.

jackmaney 12y ago

"...and let the market correct itself." No. This is the philosophy that put our economy in the shitter in the first place. More government regulations, please.

remarkEon 12y ago
Please don't conflate the market calamity of 2008 with this issue. The lesson we should have learned from the housing crisis, and all the financial derivative wizardry therein, is not "more government regulations NOW" - it's sensible regulation when necessary. Rent control is neither.

bch 12y ago

> What if the other unit needed to be knocked down for a reason other than to get rid of rent control? Knock it down and don't jack the rent ~300%?

brc 12y ago

Rent control is a shocking idea that makes a small claque of renters rich at the expense of everyone else. It's obscene. Everyone blames the owners or some lawyer when a protected tenant becomes unprotected. The blame lies in the law that built up an artificial wall around the tenant and protected them from the market. Rent control creates shortages, sub-standard properties and illegal tenancies. It should be abolished anywhere it exists.

Lazare 12y ago
"Swedish economist (and socialist) Assar Lindbeck asserted, 'In many cases rent control appears to be the most efficient technique presently known to destroy a city—except for bombing.'" Rent control is one of the small number of policies that economists on the left and right are essentially unanimous (93% in a survey of US economists; 95% in a survey of Canadian ones) in agreeing are always harmful, because they reduce both the quality and quantity of housing available. It's not even some vague hypothetical either: In the linked story, the rent control laws have resulted in the conversion of a multi-tenant building into a single-family dwelling, which is a reduction in the number of housing units in the city. A reduction in the quantity supplied will, of course, lead to an increase in the equalibrium price. And the high equilibrium price is both why Follingstad's eviction is so painful, and why they were (effectively) evicted in the first place. It's a textbook example of Why Rent Control Hurts Everyone, in one compact little story.
- ageek123 12y ago
  Indeed, even Paul Krugman thinks rent control is a bad idea: http://www.nytimes.com/2000/06/07/opinion/reckonings-a-rent-affair.html http://www.nytimes.com/2000/06/07/opinion/reckonings-a-rent-...
- dnr 12y ago
  It seems likely that the owners will "change their mind" and decide to convert the "storage area" back into an apartment once the tenant is gone and they can rent at market rate again.
  - 12y ago

kailuowang 12y ago

Does any economist disagree that free market is more efficient than a price regulated market, i.e. provide more people with more bousing? Its not just about the liquidity at the demand side, at the supply side, rent control makes it harder for market to create more supply to meet the demand. From a human right perspective, I am not sure I agree that a person have the right to live at the same place forever as long as he maintain the same income just because he used to live there. Maybe a couple of years but it shouldn't be forever.

vsl 12y ago

> Also, is rent control even a good idea? Let me put it this way: the rents dropped sharply when rent regulation finally ended in my country. After 15 years of doomsayer horror stories from the left how unregulated rents would make the poor homeless, it turned out, within a year, that the exact opposite was happening.