10 ms·

Rent control causes all kinds of bad effects. As noted by others here, it discourages maintenance and property improvements to rent control units. The landlord

Rent control causes all kinds of bad effects. As noted by others here, it discourages maintenance and property improvements to rent control units. The landlord has an incentive to create a terrible living situation to get the tenant to move out. It also reduces tenant mobility. If you're a long time renter and have a great, but maybe just affordable to you, rate, and then have any life change where you'd normally want to move, you face a tough decision. Get a new job, want to move in with someone, have a baby, need to take care of a parent, sell or buy a car, etc... and when you would like to move, instead you're stuck. Rent control also directly causes Ellis Act evictions, IMO. If your building has occupants who've been there for a while then you're getting much lower income than market rate. One way to retrieve the true value out of the property is to sell it someone who will convert to private residence, thus valuing the property much more than a landlord. Rent control is a subsidy to renters paid by landlords. They bear almost all of the financial responsibility for this attempt to make housing affordable. Home owners don't, and employers and employees don't. And the subsidy is incredibly unevenly applied: You get more a subsidy the longer you've been in a rental, it's not dependent on how much you need the subsidy. As long as the city deems it beneficial to have a rental subsidy, they should just go ahead and have a real subsidy paid by taxes, and get rid of rent control. There's a good argument that a diverse population is good for the the city, so a subsidy funded by income, sales, corporate, property, and hotel tax makes a lot of sense.

metaphorm 12y ago
> It also reduces tenant mobility this is such a great point and I wish it was talked about more in the discussions of these issues. rent control basically traps people in a single apartment for the rest of their lives. it traps their sons and daughters there too (if they elect to "inherit" the apartment, which they frequently do). this is one of the ways that ghettos come in to existence. the ability to move to somewhere else is really fundamental to preserving a person's freedom and quality of life. rent control takes that away and replaces it with a market dislocation and transfer payment.
- netc 12y ago
  Have you ever looked at the possibility where one's family has to move every year or so because landlord decided to increase rent to 'catch up' with market. This is what it looks like in communities where lot of people wants to move in but no rent control. One can move in but will not have any stability.
  - cdr 12y ago
    And with 30 days notice - not fun in an overheated rental market. In Denver as few as 7 days notice, if the rental is monthly. http://www.denverpost.com/business/ci_27709567/apartment-dwellers-metro-denver-getting-priced-out-pushed http://www.denverpost.com/business/ci_27709567/apartment-dwe...
  - rconti 12y ago
    There's a lot more "catching up" to do in a highly rent-controlled market (assuming you're not subject to rent control). For the same reasons "market rate" is artificially high (as pointed out by the linked article), the "market rate" goes up by a very large percentage each year. If all units were market rate, the market rate would not be increasing by nearly as much.
    - thinkmoore 12y ago
      I live in Somerville, MA, which does not have rent control. My rent has gone up by at least 10% every year for the past 4 years. This is not sustainable.
      - spankalee 12y ago
        No, it isn't. Unless inflation is at least 10% as well - and wages keep up. But imagine if Somerville did have rent control. The minority of units on the market would have rents go up by much, much more than 10% a year, and people who need a new place would be screwed. This is what's happened in SF.
  - gscott 12y ago
marincounty 12y ago
Yea, it doesn't work unless you're the one renting that chit hole. I have an old girlfriend who moved into one of these old houses(SF) at market rates in the nineties. The unit was not maintained back then--hot water pressure of a man with an inflamed prostate, no grounding, no functional heat(old electric units that just spin the dial), etc., but it had hard wood floors. She's still there and the place looks the same, except Mr. Chins greedy kids want her out. I don't think the kids will consider selling because they are charging new tenants unbelievable rates--for the same chit holes. I'm sorry, but I've never met a Landord who cared about the condition of their units, unless it affected the property in a structural way. I have never met a landlord who didn't try to get as much for their property as legally possible. I don't have the answer, but human greed is palatable.
- Kalium 12y ago
  > I'm sorry, but I've never met a Landord who cared about the condition of their units, unless it affected the property in a structural way. I have, but not one who cares and controls rent controlled units in SF. Landlords who know they have to compete care a great deal. What you describe is a market that is utterly dysfunctional because supply is incredibly limited.
dreamweapon 12y ago
As noted by others here, it discourages maintenance and property improvements to rent control units. The landlord has an incentive to create a terrible living situation to get the tenant to move out. An enforcement in issue. In NYC the laws are actually aggressively pro-tenant on the issue of deliberate neglect; if you don't keep the basic services working (or keep the building reasonably free of infestations, for example), the tenant can use that to delay any attempted eviction processes (justified or otherwise) quite substantially. The smarter landlords in NYC all know this, and hence generally resort to buy-outs as a tool for vacating tenants. Overt harassment-by-neglect does happen, but is quite rare. It also reduces tenant mobility. To some extent, it reduces mobility within the local market (and this effect can be quite significant, in some markets). But in an unregulated environment, a great many of these people simply would not be able to continue renting in the local market, at all. So it's a tradeoff, basically. Rent control also directly causes Ellis Act evictions, IMO. A non-sequitur; there's no reason one needs to have something like the Ellis Act in order to have rent control. NYC's market (famously) does not, for example; and profit-driven conversions of the sort you mention are generally illegal, and easily blocked in landlord-tenant court. In other words, the Ellis Act causes Ellis Act evictions; not "rent control."
- shit_parade 12y ago
  "Rent is too high, I know let me pass a law to make high rent illegal". Rent control is causing a shortage of suitable living areas and property owners are ignoring maintenance costs. "Well then, let's pass another law!" Property owners are passing rent controlled properties to their friends and family, or influencing local government regulations to do complicated rezoning laws or even straight up bribing inspectors "hmmm, well let's just pass more laws then!" How many times are you willing to try a solution that continues to fail before you give up? It would be funny except in the mean time your belief that a couple "smart people(TM)" passing laws is ruining the lives of the very people you profess to want to help. EDIT: The fact you believe it is perfectly reasonable for landlords to be held hostage and forced to do 'buy outs' of tenants who refuse to leave an apartment that isn't theirs is all I need to know about your thug mentality.
  - 12y ago
mempko 12y ago
We don't need landlords.
- mempko 12y ago
  We need landlords, they serve a function. All hail the hypno toad.
shit_parade 12y ago
People also ignore that those with power and closest to the laws will also benefit the most from them. Rent control also leads to gross nepotism where the relatives and friends of the wealthy are given first dibs on rent controlled properties by the owner of the tenement building. A quick google search will reveal how common it is for those most well off to benefit from such government run schemes like rent control.
- mempko 12y ago
  That is silly since there are so few well off people compared to the mass of people who are not. What percent of rent controlled tenants would you say are "well off" compared to say the 90% of people who are not?
cyphunk 12y ago
Perhaps there are argument against rent control but im having trouble seeing it. Home owners also suffer from lack of mobility so this argument isn't a strong one. The importance of quality of building to stable cost of living is subject to opinion and many may put greater weight in the latter. So I'm not sure about the building quality argument either. I appreciate rent control because I value so much the little free time I have from work, given to me by more stable cost of living (I live in Berlin). And I know I couldn't handle the constant necessity to fight for pay increases to cover dramatic increases in rent and insurance over time. Other people are more skilled at this nuanced life but my point is for some it works, and others not. I think having a Government that tries to keep large costs at steady is much better than them paying for subsidies which may just wind up inflating the prices.
- erroneousfunk 12y ago
  Homeowners are buying into houses that have inflated market rates because of the surrounding rent controlled units (same segment of the population fighting over inflated homes/apartments). Yes, it's difficult to move if you own a home -- you need to arrange buying and selling and transferring assets and all of that. However, you actually have more freedom to move to an area that does not have rent control (cheaper average home prices, all other factors considered), or move to a similarly priced home in the same general area. You're trapped for logistical reasons that are surmountable with a little work. You're not trapped in the sense that you absolutely can't afford to move anywhere else in your city, because of overinflated residence costs.
ThrustVectoring 12y ago
Landlords charge what the market will bear - giving renters more money for rent is simply a round-about way to give landlords more money.
anigbrowl 12y ago
Yeah, and proposition 13 and fixed rate mortgages are a massive invisible subsidy to property owners (of which I am one). It's disingenuous to focus on only one aspect of the market and ascribe all the distortions to that.
- irascible 12y ago
  Damn good point.
throwaway342526 12y ago
"Rent control is a subsidy to renters paid by landlords" I'd expand on this: Rent control is a subsidy to current residents, paid by future residents. The landlord is merely a conduit across which the wealth transfer flows.
- klipt 12y ago
  And don't forget: Prop 13 is a subsidy to current landowners, paid by every other Californian taxpayer.

metaphorm 12y ago

> It also reduces tenant mobility this is such a great point and I wish it was talked about more in the discussions of these issues. rent control basically traps people in a single apartment for the rest of their lives. it traps their sons and daughters there too (if they elect to "inherit" the apartment, which they frequently do). this is one of the ways that ghettos come in to existence. the ability to move to somewhere else is really fundamental to preserving a person's freedom and quality of life. rent control takes that away and replaces it with a market dislocation and transfer payment.

netc 12y ago
Have you ever looked at the possibility where one's family has to move every year or so because landlord decided to increase rent to 'catch up' with market. This is what it looks like in communities where lot of people wants to move in but no rent control. One can move in but will not have any stability.
- cdr 12y ago
  And with 30 days notice - not fun in an overheated rental market. In Denver as few as 7 days notice, if the rental is monthly. http://www.denverpost.com/business/ci_27709567/apartment-dwellers-metro-denver-getting-priced-out-pushed http://www.denverpost.com/business/ci_27709567/apartment-dwe...
- rconti 12y ago
  There's a lot more "catching up" to do in a highly rent-controlled market (assuming you're not subject to rent control). For the same reasons "market rate" is artificially high (as pointed out by the linked article), the "market rate" goes up by a very large percentage each year. If all units were market rate, the market rate would not be increasing by nearly as much.
  - thinkmoore 12y ago
    I live in Somerville, MA, which does not have rent control. My rent has gone up by at least 10% every year for the past 4 years. This is not sustainable.
    - spankalee 12y ago
      No, it isn't. Unless inflation is at least 10% as well - and wages keep up. But imagine if Somerville did have rent control. The minority of units on the market would have rents go up by much, much more than 10% a year, and people who need a new place would be screwed. This is what's happened in SF.
- gscott 12y ago

marincounty 12y ago

Yea, it doesn't work unless you're the one renting that chit hole. I have an old girlfriend who moved into one of these old houses(SF) at market rates in the nineties. The unit was not maintained back then--hot water pressure of a man with an inflamed prostate, no grounding, no functional heat(old electric units that just spin the dial), etc., but it had hard wood floors. She's still there and the place looks the same, except Mr. Chins greedy kids want her out. I don't think the kids will consider selling because they are charging new tenants unbelievable rates--for the same chit holes. I'm sorry, but I've never met a Landord who cared about the condition of their units, unless it affected the property in a structural way. I have never met a landlord who didn't try to get as much for their property as legally possible. I don't have the answer, but human greed is palatable.

Kalium 12y ago
> I'm sorry, but I've never met a Landord who cared about the condition of their units, unless it affected the property in a structural way. I have, but not one who cares and controls rent controlled units in SF. Landlords who know they have to compete care a great deal. What you describe is a market that is utterly dysfunctional because supply is incredibly limited.

dreamweapon 12y ago

As noted by others here, it discourages maintenance and property improvements to rent control units. The landlord has an incentive to create a terrible living situation to get the tenant to move out. An enforcement in issue. In NYC the laws are actually aggressively pro-tenant on the issue of deliberate neglect; if you don't keep the basic services working (or keep the building reasonably free of infestations, for example), the tenant can use that to delay any attempted eviction processes (justified or otherwise) quite substantially. The smarter landlords in NYC all know this, and hence generally resort to buy-outs as a tool for vacating tenants. Overt harassment-by-neglect does happen, but is quite rare. It also reduces tenant mobility. To some extent, it reduces mobility within the local market (and this effect can be quite significant, in some markets). But in an unregulated environment, a great many of these people simply would not be able to continue renting in the local market, at all. So it's a tradeoff, basically. Rent control also directly causes Ellis Act evictions, IMO. A non-sequitur; there's no reason one needs to have something like the Ellis Act in order to have rent control. NYC's market (famously) does not, for example; and profit-driven conversions of the sort you mention are generally illegal, and easily blocked in landlord-tenant court. In other words, the Ellis Act causes Ellis Act evictions; not "rent control."

shit_parade 12y ago
"Rent is too high, I know let me pass a law to make high rent illegal". Rent control is causing a shortage of suitable living areas and property owners are ignoring maintenance costs. "Well then, let's pass another law!" Property owners are passing rent controlled properties to their friends and family, or influencing local government regulations to do complicated rezoning laws or even straight up bribing inspectors "hmmm, well let's just pass more laws then!" How many times are you willing to try a solution that continues to fail before you give up? It would be funny except in the mean time your belief that a couple "smart people(TM)" passing laws is ruining the lives of the very people you profess to want to help. EDIT: The fact you believe it is perfectly reasonable for landlords to be held hostage and forced to do 'buy outs' of tenants who refuse to leave an apartment that isn't theirs is all I need to know about your thug mentality.
- 12y ago

mempko 12y ago

We don't need landlords.

mempko 12y ago
We need landlords, they serve a function. All hail the hypno toad.

shit_parade 12y ago

People also ignore that those with power and closest to the laws will also benefit the most from them. Rent control also leads to gross nepotism where the relatives and friends of the wealthy are given first dibs on rent controlled properties by the owner of the tenement building. A quick google search will reveal how common it is for those most well off to benefit from such government run schemes like rent control.

mempko 12y ago
That is silly since there are so few well off people compared to the mass of people who are not. What percent of rent controlled tenants would you say are "well off" compared to say the 90% of people who are not?

cyphunk 12y ago

Perhaps there are argument against rent control but im having trouble seeing it. Home owners also suffer from lack of mobility so this argument isn't a strong one. The importance of quality of building to stable cost of living is subject to opinion and many may put greater weight in the latter. So I'm not sure about the building quality argument either. I appreciate rent control because I value so much the little free time I have from work, given to me by more stable cost of living (I live in Berlin). And I know I couldn't handle the constant necessity to fight for pay increases to cover dramatic increases in rent and insurance over time. Other people are more skilled at this nuanced life but my point is for some it works, and others not. I think having a Government that tries to keep large costs at steady is much better than them paying for subsidies which may just wind up inflating the prices.

erroneousfunk 12y ago
Homeowners are buying into houses that have inflated market rates because of the surrounding rent controlled units (same segment of the population fighting over inflated homes/apartments). Yes, it's difficult to move if you own a home -- you need to arrange buying and selling and transferring assets and all of that. However, you actually have more freedom to move to an area that does not have rent control (cheaper average home prices, all other factors considered), or move to a similarly priced home in the same general area. You're trapped for logistical reasons that are surmountable with a little work. You're not trapped in the sense that you absolutely can't afford to move anywhere else in your city, because of overinflated residence costs.

ThrustVectoring 12y ago

Landlords charge what the market will bear - giving renters more money for rent is simply a round-about way to give landlords more money.

anigbrowl 12y ago

Yeah, and proposition 13 and fixed rate mortgages are a massive invisible subsidy to property owners (of which I am one). It's disingenuous to focus on only one aspect of the market and ascribe all the distortions to that.

irascible 12y ago
Damn good point.

throwaway342526 12y ago

"Rent control is a subsidy to renters paid by landlords" I'd expand on this: Rent control is a subsidy to current residents, paid by future residents. The landlord is merely a conduit across which the wealth transfer flows.

klipt 12y ago
And don't forget: Prop 13 is a subsidy to current landowners, paid by every other Californian taxpayer.