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Comment by amorphid | Hacker News Reader

I live in a San Francisco rent-controlled apartment. I only moved to San Francisco because of rent control. Otherwise I would not have been able to afford a place at all. New apartments in cities without rent control always seem to be expensive, and I couldn't afford those either. Rents on old apartments seem to be skyrocketing, too. I, for one, welcome rent control.

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It's not that rent control doesn't help some people - it's just the wrong solution.

The real solution is building more housing. (I think)

That's not the only solution I think we should be implementing, though. We could subsidize housing for people that can't afford it in other ways - giving people money to pay for their apartment through social programs after considering their income, rent, and expenses to get a grip on their actual ability to pay for available housing. All without having a hard-line income cutoff for this stuff (which doesn't help when the numbers are out of balance with the local situation). Building housing will hopefully help folks so long as there is a shortage, but it isn't a cure-all either.

Sounds like a recipe for really, really wealthy landlords.

Folks aren't generally getting rich from HUD: In Indiana, at least, lots won't accept HUD due to regulations and not paying on time. The last bit should be fixed, the first bit should just be standard for rentals. Landlords wouldn't necessarily know if they just let it be shown as regular income.

Besides, this does hinge on there being enough housing - including a few empty places. It is better to generally have empty units available just like you want a little unemployment to have a pool of employees to choose from.

> lots won't accept HUD due to regulations and not paying on time

That's pretty weird, since if HUD assists you with rent, they pay the landlord directly.

Subsidize? Kind of what we do with educational costs? That didn't really work out.

Education is not housing, though, and has different goals. Education subsidies at higher levels is off. If we just paid most of the tuition and books, I think folks would care more that the schools are spending on sports instead of education. I'd certainly not do it with tax dollars and not allow colleges to charge students. Sports scholarships would be a thing of the past. I also think we could revamp degrees to have more pointed classes, insisting the "well rounded" education happen before college. It could probably actually make a masters be a 5 and sometimes 6 year program instead of 6-7 years, for example.

At the lower levels, some of our problem is funding by school district instead of distributing state-wide or country-wide. School are still segregated in many ways and the system has created wide disparities between schools because of funding. Sure, you need to adapt a little to the local level, but that's mostly for things like more special education students, more students not speaking english, and/or higher rates of poverty, which affects learning. The last case is some of what has made some of our schools bad, and the rest of us act like we don't care because it isn't our kids.

Tax empty houses to subsidize low-cost high density apartments.

How and who would you tax? Someone that just lost their house to the bank, for example... does the bank pay? The person that got sick and lost their job and home? Only empty rental units?

There is a little merit for the last one, so long as it is reasonable. You want some empty units on the market in most price ranges at all times, just like it is good to have some unemployment so folks can replace workers and have a pool to choose from. You don't really want rental units to sit empty for 6 to 12 months, though, and is probably a sign that there are many short-term rentals or the landlord is charging too much. Even this only works if the landlord can prove he's being prudent with pricing - a simple mortgage + average upkeep + fair set profit percentage would do, so long as it isn't obviously in the landlords favor.

If someone lost their house to the bank, the bank would be liable while they control the house. Main focus is on empty rental units or empty investment properties.

Presumably you'd need some window of exemption for normal transfers and typical moving times.

I'd probably implement as ~2x property tax on dwellings unoccupied for more than 3 months in the past calendar year. As you pointed out, this would have a downward pressure on rents, as landlords would be less able to leave an apartment empty while they wait for someone willing to pay the highest rate. Also, people who own multiple houses would be penalized for keeping some of those houses empty without renting them out.

You certainly did not pay less to move in than you would have in a city without rent control. In SF, rent-controlled rents start at rates comparable to non-rent-controlled apartments. One might think they'd start higher, given that the landlord is agreeing to grant what amounts to an annuity along with providing a place to live, but that doesn't seem to happen. If you think rent control makes the prevailing market rates for new tenants lower, where do you suppose the money comes from to give senior tenants discounts of up to 100%?

I propose a new law that people with my SSN don't have to pay taxes. It would help me out a lot.

Every policy helps some people at the expense of others. Concentrated benefits, diffuse costs. You need to weigh both sides, not just the benefits. (edited)

You could've easily afforded to live there if there were zero restrictions on building.

What downstream effects that might have, who knows, but rent control isn't the only solution.

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