Landlords Are Pushing the Supreme Court to End Rent Control
jacobin.com
jacobin.com
Now how can we get rid of nimby rule? Local governments have way too much influence on development, for better or worse.
Perhaps sufficiently large development proposals must be entertained by the entire city or town rather than being unilaterally decided by a board - that seems like a sufficient compromise (at the expense of speed, but development is slow anyway given the appeals).
Of course that’s not a perfect solution either since there are towns in which home ownership rate is almost 100% and thus they would be most incentivized to not allow any development even if they all voted at the expense of the neighbors shouldering the development burden.
A revision would make more sense, but treating it like a black and white issue is disingenuous.
More basic issues clearly need to be addressed before politicians can repeal rent control and still get reelected.
Economics is not even close to being sufficiently precise for you to be able to reason through any appreciable problem from first principles.
In general, we should be skeptical of any policy where those helped are obvious and those harmed are non-obvious or distributed through time and space.
It doesn't suppress supply when building is already wildly profitable and is just being slowed down by permitting either.
The negative impacts of rent control have been the subject of literally hundreds of empirical studies. It's a known quantity at this point and, when you quantify the impact, it's generally worth it, especially in our current zoning hell. It also helps with price stickiness once supply does increase : as you know, developpers only like to build upmarket appartements, which typically take a decade or more to trickle down to the average person.
The main thing is not to do silly things like only apply rent control to a small portion of appartements, we know it doesn't work, and to allow rent to increase with any reasonably incurred costs. This way you actually incentivize landlords to repair their apartments, you reduce the mobility risk, etc...
Just have sf associations build non-market housing. En masse.
I don't mean to imply abolishing the federal government in favor of local government. Just a redistribution of power that favors the local government more than the current status quo.
The problem is which is which and if conflict how to resolve them. Not sure there is an answer.
If the entire nation votes on it, the solution will be “send them all to California”.
Complaining about it is basically an admission that either other more important factors are keeping supply from happening or that the purported market benefits if/when it does might not be real.
Quite possibly both. As far as I can tell even when there are no obstacles the market isn’t interested in adding supply to the point of diminishing marginal returns, and unit prices do not fall on supply movement, only demand drops.
Here’s hoping the rich folks figure that out before it’s too late to solve with democracy.
Capitalism is a mode of social relations that monetary policy is downstream from. Remember capitalism was established as dominant by way of revolution. Capitalism and democracy fundamentally contradict one another from the outset, but democracy was capitalism's path to victory. The contradiction still remains.
Realize the most important aspect of capitalism is the ability to accumulate capital, to a fundamentally infinite end because any limits will be overturned by the controllers of the capital.
It’s not like you can pay to skip the process.
It's just a lawsuit against NY that the plaintiffs hope to get in front of Supreme Court and win there.
The article insinuates there's lobbying involved but it's mum on the details i.e. what exactly they are spending money on given that it'll be decided by 9 judges.
Furthermore, I believe Citizen United is specifically about spending money on political candidates and whatever lobbying this is, it's not that.
The article doesn't go into detail about the claims of the plaintiffs (called "lobbyists" as if the court can he lobbied), I wonder why. I really want to know what their constitutional argument is, because I don't see rent control by states and cities being unconstitutional. Unfortunately this article is devoid of substance and is just a propaganda piece to normalize the "billionaire benefactor" narrative.
Imposing them post-development distorts the market and causes weird side effects (people refusing to move even when they “should”, illegal subletting, etc).
Why your friends get cheap rents and not my friends who would also like to have cheap apartments in SF?
How is it fair that everyone who doesn't have rent controlled apartment is paying more for their apt than they otherwise would, as dictated by supply-demand 101.
How is it fair that a private entity (a landlord) subsidies another private entity (renter) under threat of government violence?
In any other business context (e.g. selling cars) such rules would be beyond the pale.
Can you imagine the government telling Ford that if a buyer meets some criteria Ford has to sell them F-150 at 40% discount? It sounds absurd but this is what rent control is.
Not much is said, but globalism, facilitated by the internet, is a factor driving up house prices. In Vancouver, Canada, they built a lot of condos but the majority of the stock was bought up by overseas residents. In many cases the condos weren't even advertised for sale in Vancouver for locals to buy.
The internet has made it easier for investors to obtain information about potential "investment" properties.
If you are going to build more homes you need to make them available to locals only. I'm sure present (globalist) trade treaties forbid such things.
Another possible solution is for the government to build rent to own housing at an affordable price. That's effectively public housing which has its problems too. Also, I suspect there are trade treaties that prevent that from happening too.
You can ruin that with zoning, of course. But rent control isn’t the anti-supply force in that scenario.
But by the same token, proceeds from rent should be taxed at the full land value of property, so that the only profit from rent is from improvements. The tax proceeds should then be used to subsidize rent, if necessary.
In general for something to be optimal supply must meet demand. Usually if demand is high supply will eventually follow. Demand for construction (creating supply) is there, but for reasons we don’t need to get into, it’s not allowed.
So affordable housing is throwing the relative poor a bone, but the thing is those mandates change profit margins if the non-affordable housing cannot effectively eat the cost, changing the demand for construction.