I can't help but wonder if there would be more housing supply and therefore lower rents if the city was more friendly towards landlords.
(I'm a renter in San Francisco)
I don't lose any sleep over it. San Francisco is a postage stamp of a city. It's not as if there are vast tracts of persistently unbuilt land, or apartments sitting vacant for months (indeed, there are usually bidding wars and half-hour showings of new rentals). And new construction (since it isn't covered by rent control), tends to cost more per square foot than the older stuff. All evidence suggests that rent control caps prices in the city.
You can argue that without rent control, landlords would be free to expel the fabled rent-controlled "freeloaders" who have been living in Pac Heights apartments since 1953. Okay. So rent on those units goes up to market rate, the supply of market-rate housing goes up by a few units, and an equal number of tenants are now homeless, competing for market-rate housing. Not a recipe for lower rents.
Another argument is that rent control reduces the economic incentives for landlords to build new units. That's fine, except again, new construction isn't covered by rent control laws. So it's actually in a landlord's interest to rebuild. And it happens -- right now, there are a number of projects underway all over the city.
I don't think rent control has much to do with the rents here. The city is 47 miles square, and is the second most densely populated city in the US. Meanwhile, 3/4 of the land area is plastered with low-density bungalows and low-rise apartment buildings -- and that's never going to change. San Francisco is zoned like a beachside village. It's the source of the city's charm, and the reason that it will never have the high-density housing that might actually lower rents. Rent control is probably incidental.
True. Shockingly retarded, but true.
Though experiment: If you were tasked to invest a sum of money in residential property, all other things being equal, would you choose to become a SF landlord over being a landlord in another city?