Comment by busterarm | Hacker News Reader

Comment by busterarm | Hacker News Reader

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I love this lie that everyone believes about rent control in NY where everyone is getting huge posh apartments for cheap.

Almost all "rent stabilized" apartments in Manhattan are within spitting distance or throwing distance of market rate. Once a significant number of them cross the $2700/mo threshold in a building, the rent destabilizes.

"Rent controlled" units account for less than 30,000 units in all of NYC. That number is never going up and that number is half of what it was 15 years ago. They are not 4BR apartments for $250 a month. This is a wonderful lie that middle class people believe because they don't actually know anyone with a rent controlled apartment -- they're kind of unicorns in the city.

The rent control board in NYC has approved the maximum increase after every single 2 year freeze since about 1990. Then landlords do improvements to get MCI increases as well. The median rent controlled unit in NYC rents for $1040 and is a studio.

The rent controlled 1BR that I live in has not ever been $250/mo and hasn't been under $1000/mo since maybe 1992.

It’s nice that you’re benefiting, but rent control is relatively well studied and it doesn’t achieve its aims.

https://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2015/08/e...

You're ignoring the OPs point. Rent controlled apartments are a rounding error in the grand scheme of making NYC apartments affordable. It's also been around for a very long time, so its effects are well known. As the article outlines, Airbnb is something new.

Rent controlled and rent stabilized two very different things but both decrease housing inventory.

According to this there are 1 million rent stabilized (not controlled) units in NYC: https://ny.curbed.com/2017/4/13/15264890/nyc-apartments-guid...

If that's accurate, it's a little bit more than a rounding error.

Ultimately there has to be a balance. Throwing out long-time renters isn't a great idea but nor is capping prices to decrease inventory.

Personally I favor construction reform -- I mean, look how expensive that 1 mile of the 2nd Ave subway was. It shouldn't be that expensive to build in NYC.

To expound a little; from the actual data source linked in that article:

> According to the 2014 NYC Housing and Vacancy Survey, there are about 27,000 rent controlled apartments vs. about 1,030,000 rent stabilized apartments.

Like you say, rent control is very different than rent stabilization. Rent control limits the actual rent. Rent stabilization limits the annual rent increase.

Rent stabilization doesn't really account for extra stickiness in the housing market (in other words, it doesn't meaningfully decrease housing supply). Rent control does but again, since there are so few of those it's basically a non-factor.

6,200 units on Airbnb in city of 3.4 million homes. Airbnb is also rounding error.

If you are concerned about affordability, the focus should be almost entirely on barriers to housing development.

Huh? There's over 30,000 AirBNB listings in NYC.

One of the unmentioned goals of rent control at the time was to stop the mass exodus of people out of New York starting at the tail end of the 60s.

I live not far from The Deuce and my neighborhood was plagued with drug use, prostitution, muggings and homelessness. We stayed in our apartments in an extremely dangerous city while hordes of people left. My landlord wouldn't have her building still if not for rent regulation.

Really? Because rent control certainly myself and everyone I knew in a similar situation with a chance at class mobility.

Rent control allowed my mom to stop being a cab driver and go to nursing school. Rent control facilitated me getting a really great education and career.

I grew up needing food stamps, handmedown clothes and even shoes. How can you, with a straight face, tell me that bullshit?

Because you benefited at the cost of others. For everyone that has your success story, rent control causes a number of others to have even less access to affordable housing.

And that’s JUST because of rent control

Not wage stagnation or cost of living increases, or AirBNB (oh wait)

Just rent control

So let’s screw the people relying on it because in some narrow context about screwing others (that never happens otherwise in the economy!) rent control is bad

There are hacks and patches all over “the system”. That’s called free market making agreements as needed when needed, IMO

Just because when quantified some story is told that seems off to external players doesn’t mean it’s anyone’s concern but the parties directly involced

> benefited at the cost of others

The cost disproportionately affects the wealthy. Due to the marginal utility of money (your first $10,000 a year has a lot more utility than your 100th), that means even a zero-sum benefit was likely a huge net positive measured in utility.

Mmhmm. Tax money goes to helping the poor and homeless too. That's more money that you could spend on housing.

> How can you, with a straight face, tell me that bullshit?

That breaks the site guidelines and you can't do it here, regardless of how wrong someone is. Please read https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

Sorry. There's a better way that I could have phrased that, but I pretty clearly did not criticize the person or call them names but rather their argument. I know you're a busy guy but maybe could you correct my misunderstanding here?

This is absolutely language that I would use face to face with someone.

It's pretty simple. First, that sentence combined personal language with aggressive language. That crosses into personal attack almost by definition. Second, it adds no information.

The fix is simple too: edit it out. Signal/noise ratio goes up and the comment gets better.

The alternative to rent control is subsidized housing. Is that a bad thing?

Or people only living where they can afford to. Lots of people might like to live in New York, London, or Sydney (just a few examples). The big problem with housing subsidies is, who gets them? You cant just give them to everyone, or the price of housing will quickly correct to balance supply with the artificially increased demand.

Because to the kind of people who leap to the defense of businesses like Airbnb and slag off rent control, this is just an abstraction. They don’t know or care about the poor people who these policies helped, and think they’ll find some measure of safety by aligning themselves with the Capital class.

They won’t in the long run, but that’s where we are now.

It's a really good rhetorical trick they pull. "The Market" is making things more expensive because you pulled something off the market! Supply and demand buddy! Of course, if pulling some units off the market is good, why not pulling all of them off? The insane speculation has to stop, it literally destroyed the economy in 2008.

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