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I just had a discussion about this with a coworker. I very strongly agree with this article. Diversity does not survive in expensive areas and I strongly belie

by smtddr 11y ago

I just had a discussion about this with a coworker. I very strongly agree with this article. Diversity does not survive in expensive areas and I strongly believe that is worth preserving in San Francisco. I understand the problems rent-control causes, but if it were removed and all residential areas jump up to market price then diversity would be completely destroyed. That might not mean anything to a lot of people who work in tech(the feeling I get when I talk about it with coworkers), but I think it means a lot.

civilian 11y ago
You're comparing two different solutions, removing rent control & allowing new housing to be built. For the sake of the argument, let's keep the rent-control, but let's let developers build new buildings! If they build on a property with rent-controlled units, they have to replace those rent-controlled units in the new building and provide housing for the tenants somewhere else while the building is being built. It's just a supply/demand problem. We should to increase the amount of housing available in SF to lower prices so we can bring in the new generation of creatives, freaks and outcasts. We've got a big hill to climb, and there would be a lot of apartment towers going up, but SF could do it. As far as rent-control goes, there's a moral argument to be made. What makes the person who's already living in SF more deserving of a place to live than the person who wants to move to SF? Rent-control is fundamentally anti-immigrant.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
dylanjermiah 11y ago
What do you mean by 'diversity'? Can you please define it?
- ectoplasm 11y ago
  "People with diverse incomes" satisfies his argument.
Lazare 11y ago
> Diversity does not survive in expensive areas Arguably true. > I understand the problems rent-control causes, but if it were removed and all residential areas jump up to market price then diversity would be completely destroyed. As a matter of theory, it's hard to see that rent control actually protects diversity. And emperically, it's absolutely not doing that, in San Francisco or in other cities which have tried it. Here are you choices: 1. Remove restrictions on building. Housing will be plentiful, diversity will be expanded, but what currently makes the city special will be lost (and maybe it'll end up even better, but it'll certainly change). 2. Maintain restrictions on building. Housing will be scarce, diversity will be lost, but the city won't change. Rent control is entirely orthogonal to this. IF you have scarce housing, then you must allocate it among the people who want it. One way to do this is via the market. If you do not like the way the market will allocate it, then you can cap the rents and allocate it in some other fashion. But as a society, we are extremely bad at allocating things fairly (hence why we rely on markets so much; it's not that they're very good, it's that we're really crap). Which means that the way housing under rent control will inevitably be allocated isn't going to preserve diversity. Rent control makes the lucky few who get to live in the city even luckier, but it doesn't tell you who ends up being one of those lucky few. But we know, from decades of experience, that the lucky few end tend to up being the already privileged. Notice that San Francisco—with strong rent control laws—is actually not a diverse city. Oakland—with weak ones—is one of the most diverse cities in the US. Similar patterns can be seen across the US. Your assumption that rent control aids diversity is supported neither by theory nor evidence; the fact that rent control could enable the poor to afford to live in a city doesn't mean that it will. And it doesn't. What really helps diversity is having a lot of housing relative to the number of people who want to live there. San Francisco has scarce housing.
- ectoplasm 11y ago
  Rent control is about not increasing rents by too much each year while you are living there. Once you move out, the landlord can agree to a new lease at any amount. The only way to circumvent this is to assign your lease to the next tenant when you move out. Most people just move out after a while and the apartment goes back on the market. You get some very long term tenants, but so what? It's a small percentage of the population. Given this, I think rent control is fairly ineffective at preserving diversity, but I like it because it means that people can't be forced to move all of a sudden because their landlord puts the rent up by $500 a month. I don't believe that the already astronomical rents in SF would go much higher if rent control was abolished anyway. That said, building more housing obviously helps. As does making nearby cities nicer places to live.
eli_gottlieb 11y ago
The problem isn't that some existing housing has rent-control. The problem is that 75% of rental stock is under rent-control, and there's a 35% owner-occupancy rate (with a strict limit on property-tax increases), meaning that ~84% of the city's available housing stock is allocated to subsidize old residents at the expense of new ones. How does anyone expect to have affordable housing with a growing population if, effectively, only 16% of the entire housing stock is allowed to be allocated to new arrivals at market rates? It would be another thing if some form of subsidized-rate housing was also offered for newcomers to SF, but instead what we get is a tiered system in which existing residents are set against newcomers, with landowners being the only ones to really benefit. http://techcrunch.com/2014/04/14/sf-housing/ http://techcrunch.com/2014/04/14/sf-housing/
BurningFrog 11y ago
> if it were removed and all residential areas jump up to market price Nit pick: If all these units came out on the open market, it would mean a substantial lowering of the market price. It would also mean that a lot more people could live in SF, both because more people would share existing apartments, and because many of the apartments now empty would be rented out.

by smtddr 11y ago

civilian 11y ago

You're comparing two different solutions, removing rent control & allowing new housing to be built. For the sake of the argument, let's keep the rent-control, but let's let developers build new buildings! If they build on a property with rent-controlled units, they have to replace those rent-controlled units in the new building and provide housing for the tenants somewhere else while the building is being built. It's just a supply/demand problem. We should to increase the amount of housing available in SF to lower prices so we can bring in the new generation of creatives, freaks and outcasts. We've got a big hill to climb, and there would be a lot of apartment towers going up, but SF could do it. As far as rent-control goes, there's a moral argument to be made. What makes the person who's already living in SF more deserving of a place to live than the person who wants to move to SF? Rent-control is fundamentally anti-immigrant.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

dylanjermiah 11y ago

What do you mean by 'diversity'? Can you please define it?

ectoplasm 11y ago
"People with diverse incomes" satisfies his argument.

Lazare 11y ago

> Diversity does not survive in expensive areas Arguably true. > I understand the problems rent-control causes, but if it were removed and all residential areas jump up to market price then diversity would be completely destroyed. As a matter of theory, it's hard to see that rent control actually protects diversity. And emperically, it's absolutely not doing that, in San Francisco or in other cities which have tried it. Here are you choices: 1. Remove restrictions on building. Housing will be plentiful, diversity will be expanded, but what currently makes the city special will be lost (and maybe it'll end up even better, but it'll certainly change). 2. Maintain restrictions on building. Housing will be scarce, diversity will be lost, but the city won't change. Rent control is entirely orthogonal to this. IF you have scarce housing, then you must allocate it among the people who want it. One way to do this is via the market. If you do not like the way the market will allocate it, then you can cap the rents and allocate it in some other fashion. But as a society, we are extremely bad at allocating things fairly (hence why we rely on markets so much; it's not that they're very good, it's that we're really crap). Which means that the way housing under rent control will inevitably be allocated isn't going to preserve diversity. Rent control makes the lucky few who get to live in the city even luckier, but it doesn't tell you who ends up being one of those lucky few. But we know, from decades of experience, that the lucky few end tend to up being the already privileged. Notice that San Francisco—with strong rent control laws—is actually not a diverse city. Oakland—with weak ones—is one of the most diverse cities in the US. Similar patterns can be seen across the US. Your assumption that rent control aids diversity is supported neither by theory nor evidence; the fact that rent control could enable the poor to afford to live in a city doesn't mean that it will. And it doesn't. What really helps diversity is having a lot of housing relative to the number of people who want to live there. San Francisco has scarce housing.

ectoplasm 11y ago
Rent control is about not increasing rents by too much each year while you are living there. Once you move out, the landlord can agree to a new lease at any amount. The only way to circumvent this is to assign your lease to the next tenant when you move out. Most people just move out after a while and the apartment goes back on the market. You get some very long term tenants, but so what? It's a small percentage of the population. Given this, I think rent control is fairly ineffective at preserving diversity, but I like it because it means that people can't be forced to move all of a sudden because their landlord puts the rent up by $500 a month. I don't believe that the already astronomical rents in SF would go much higher if rent control was abolished anyway. That said, building more housing obviously helps. As does making nearby cities nicer places to live.

eli_gottlieb 11y ago

The problem isn't that some existing housing has rent-control. The problem is that 75% of rental stock is under rent-control, and there's a 35% owner-occupancy rate (with a strict limit on property-tax increases), meaning that ~84% of the city's available housing stock is allocated to subsidize old residents at the expense of new ones. How does anyone expect to have affordable housing with a growing population if, effectively, only 16% of the entire housing stock is allowed to be allocated to new arrivals at market rates? It would be another thing if some form of subsidized-rate housing was also offered for newcomers to SF, but instead what we get is a tiered system in which existing residents are set against newcomers, with landowners being the only ones to really benefit. http://techcrunch.com/2014/04/14/sf-housing/ http://techcrunch.com/2014/04/14/sf-housing/

BurningFrog 11y ago

> if it were removed and all residential areas jump up to market price Nit pick: If all these units came out on the open market, it would mean a substantial lowering of the market price. It would also mean that a lot more people could live in SF, both because more people would share existing apartments, and because many of the apartments now empty would be rented out.