Re:Do rent controls work?
by majormajor on Monday August 31, 2015 @11:32PM
(#10150570)
Just for the heck of it: Yes, Yes, No. Though I'm paying market rate (but not in SF).
Neither rent control as usually implemented nor construction seems like much of a silver bullet, though.
I completely understand why cities are reluctant to change construction policies on short-term trends. Building a ton of new stock for a boom, and then running into a bust, could lead to massive vacancies that would ultimately impact the quality of the city for everyone left there after the people the boom attracted are gone.
It's also obvious that current residents will prioritize themselves over future replacement residents. And this doesn't seem too unreasonable to me. If you think their government policies are so terrible, you should take that into account in your calculations of what you'd be willing to pay to live there.
So I support rent control for existing tenants, so that long-term residents who never had a job that let them build enough capital to buy don't get forced out just by the vagaries of the market. Affordable housing programs can be useful too to enable lower-income workers to still live locally, but in my experience this is more commonly abused in new-construction situations where much more attention is paid to the letter of the law than the spirit; rent control is a more practical alternative.
Re:Do rent controls work?
by simoncion on Tuesday September 01, 2015 @12:29AM
(#10150736)
This housing pressure has been -with the possible exception of a blip during 2008- near-constant for at least the past ten years. How long must a trend persist before it is no longer short-term? :)
Neither rent control as usually implemented nor construction seems like much of a silver bullet, though.
I completely understand why cities are reluctant to change construction policies on short-term trends. Building a ton of new stock for a boom, and then running into a bust, could lead to massive vacancies that would ultimately impact the quality of the city for everyone left there after the people the boom attracted are gone.
It's also obvious that current residents will prioritize themselves over future replacement residents. And this doesn't seem too unreasonable to me. If you think their government policies are so terrible, you should take that into account in your calculations of what you'd be willing to pay to live there.
So I support rent control for existing tenants, so that long-term residents who never had a job that let them build enough capital to buy don't get forced out just by the vagaries of the market. Affordable housing programs can be useful too to enable lower-income workers to still live locally, but in my experience this is more commonly abused in new-construction situations where much more attention is paid to the letter of the law than the spirit; rent control is a more practical alternative.