Rising Rents Are Pushing More Tenants Past the Breaking Point

Re:Rising Rents Are Pushing More Tenants Past the Breaking P... by nerfhammer on Thursday October 26, 2017 @06:48PM (#15563915)

Well it's either greedy, scheming tech workers or greedy, scheming Chinese speculators. Isn't there a pattern here? The problem simply must be caused by powerful, scheming outsiders. Despite lack of evidence, as this comment is a great example, defying the claim of lack of such by GP as if it simply hadn't been heard.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Rising Rents Are Pushing More Tenants Past the Breaking P... by jacobolus on Thursday October 26, 2017 @07:49PM (#15564311)

A lot of it is greedy, scheming local slumlords, to be honest.

If we abolished Prop 13 statewide, did some minor up-zoning throughout the Bay Area (and had more mixed use zones), made new housing easier to construct (less drawn out process for people to block development, etc.), reduced parking requirements, worked on improving public transit, and taxed unlived-in buildings [or better, switched toward land-value taxes], did more planning at a regional rather than municipal level, we could take a lot of incremental bites out of the housing quagmire.

Unfortunately most of those are politically infeasible.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Rising Rents Are Pushing More Tenants Past the Breaking P... by projectramo on Thursday October 26, 2017 @10:33PM (#15565223)

Yes, I think the largest property owner in the US is Blackstone, a private equity firm that bought the property at the downturn.

From a strictly economic perspective they are helping increase demand when it was low and increase supply later on. They got rewarded for that.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Rising Rents Are Pushing More Tenants Past the Breaking P... by letlambda on Friday October 27, 2017 @02:37AM (#15566201)

How does owning a property increase it's supply? I'm not an economist, but I think you have got to build houses to make more of them.

[ Parent | on HN ]