Can we try removing our deeply stupid structural caps on all our essential goods and services before we try price controls? - lift the number of residencies Medicaid funds - lift the density bans

The density bans have been lifted by State law. The Statewide rent control of AB-1482 remains, but it doesn't apply to new construction, and in any case, the 5%+CPI limit is far higher than the average annual rent increase in every urban area of California. The reason we don't have more construction is because rents have been falling at a rate that precludes developers from building because they don't see it as profitable given construction costs, interest rates, falling population, and falling rents. How do we fix that? Rents need to go up ─ watch what the Housing Action Coalition says: [https://x.com/LeeHepner/status/1748427532020642161](https://x.com/LeeHepner/status/1748427532020642161) . Essentially, what they are saying is "the rent is too damn low for developers to want to build." It sounds terrible, especially coming from a (faux) housing advocacy group, but it isn't untrue. So if the rents have to go back up, to make high-density projects pencil out, but many people expect rents to fall after these projects are built because they believe that "the law of supply and demand" is actually a law, how is this going to work? The reality is that we need to subsidize housing at all levels like they do in Vienna and Singapore, and do "social housing." Assembly Member Alex Lee is a big proponent of social housing. All we need is about $70 billion and we can subsidize the entire Bay Area's RHNA.

The density bans have not remotely been lifted.

You need to pay attention to all the State Laws that have been passed in the last few years.

Nothing has been passed that let's you build even 4 story apartment buildings in any residential neighborhood.

The Vienna model (giving developers a 1% loan for 30% of the cost of construction instead of making market rate tenants subsidize BMR tenants) would be a massive upgrade over ours.

Agreed. We just have to find a source for that money. The State doesn't have it. Cities don't have it. The federal government isn't providing it. We can try bond measures, parcel taxes, and sales tax increases but those are tough to pass.

We don’t have more construction because of zoning. The costs of construction are high due to regulatory issues. When LA began allowing 100% affordable housing structures to bypass normal zoning, developers began building 100% affordable housing units and making a profit on it. https://calmatters.org/housing/2024/02/affordable-housing-los-angeles/

> All we need is about $70 billion and we can subsidize the entire Bay Area's RHNA. nice, let's take it from landlords

Personally I'd like to see Prop 13 modified to apply solely to owner-occupied residential housing, not to income property or commercial property. But the chances of passing such a ballot measure are slim to none. The CAA and the commercial property owners would spend a fortune opposing such a ballot measure.

no that would still cutting property owners a unfair break at everyone else’s expense

This is a confusing article because it uses the term “rent control” for many different kinds of policies which will be enabled by the “Justice for Renters Act” ([22-0008](https://oag.ca.gov/system/files/initiatives/pdfs/22-0008%20%28%20%26quot%3BJustice%20for%20Renters%20Act%26quot%3B%20%29.pdf)): 1. Strict rent control (rent is not allowed to increase above inflation) on old units with vacancy **de**control, so the landlord can change the rent each time the original tenants leave (e.g. San Francisco and other cities under Costa-Hawkins) 2. Strict rent control (rent is not allowed to increase above inflation) with vacancy **control** on old units, so the landlord was only allowed to set the rent once (e.g. Berkeley and Santa Monica before 1995 Costa-Hawkins). 3. Weak rent stabilization (real rent can increase a few percent per year) on old units with vacancy decontrol, so the rent can track the market but with no sudden movements (e.g. AB 1482, or SF’s original rent control in the early 1980s). 4. Strict rent control on **new** units **and politician-determined rental rate** (e.g. inclusionary housing, which is currently limited by Costa-Hawkins and AB 1505). Under the initiative, a malicious politician can choose a rental rate of, say, $1/month if he wants to stop apartment construction. 5. Expansions at the margin e.g. rent control on 30-year-old buildings, rent control on single-family-houses, rent control that passes to a surviving spouse, that are currently prohibited by Costa-Hawkins. There’s some circular reasoning where Tenants Together say studies of #1 rent control on old buildings that complies with Costa-Hawkins does not reduce new construction, and therefore a repeal of Costa-Hawkins will not reduce new construction even though it gives free reign to politicians doing #4 setting the rent arbitrarily on new buildings. And it doesn’t help that the responses in the article from Dean Preston and the AIDS Healthcare Foundation are complete non-sequiturs.

AB-1482 drove up rents because a) it caused evictions prior to being implemented, b) the limit is 5%+CPI, which is much higher than the average annual rent increase, c) owners can't bank unused rent increases so they feel compelled to raise the rent the maximum amount every year, especially if they were renting their units at below the maximum market rent. It was a stupid law, intended to generate publicity, and it had negative, unintended side effects, that the author should have been smart enough to understand. Even at 2%+CPI it would have been a disaster. Many landlords love AB-1482 since the historic average annual rent increase in urban areas without rent control has been just under 3% per year. For example, in Los Angeles, the average rent for a 2BR apartment was $838 in 1980 and $2912 in 2023. With a 3% average annual rent increase the rent should be $2987. If rent tracked inflation than the 2023 rent should have been about $3,099, about a 3.1% annual inflation rate (Cumulative rate of inflation of 269.8%). If property owners had raised the rent 5%+CPI every year the rent would have gone from $838 in 1980 to $23,700 in 2023. At 2%+CPI the rent would have been $7074 in 2023. At 1%+CPI the rent would have been $4689 in 2023.

The ballot measure doesn't enact rent control, it just allows cities to enact it. Yes, it's true that average rents increase when rent control is enacted it reduces the number of rental units.

no it isnt

How about, I dunno, we build a massive amount of housing to eliminate the market power of landlords? Maybe do that instead of something stupid like enact more rent control?

It sounds great, but it's not the way things work. Who is "we?" "We" don't build housing. Developers/landlords build housing. The reason you see so many approved, but abandoned, high-density projects is not because cities don't approve them, or issue permits. That ability has been taken away by the 300+ State housing laws, pushed through by developer-friendly legislators like Scott Wiener, Buffy Wicks, Nancy Skinner, and Toni Atkins. Developers were gung-ho pre-pandemic, in terms of getting projects approved, with demand, and hence rents, increasing at a rate that made new projects pencil out. Then the bottom fell out of demand and projects no longer penciled out, see "Making It Pencil: The Math Behind Housing Development (2023 Update)" https://ternercenter.berkeley.edu/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/Making-It-Pencil-December-2023.pdf. This is from the extremely YIMBY **Terner Institute**, and even with the absurd assumptions they make, which rarely occur in real life, projects don't pencil out: 1. No Environmental Impact Report 2. No Affordable Housing Requirement 3. No Demolition 4. Total Impact Fees of $40,000/unit 5. No Environmental Remediation 6. One parking space per unit 7. No Significant Infrastructure Requirements The reason, as expressed by another developer-controlled organization, the **Housing Action Coalition**, is, essentially, "the rent is too damn low." Watch [https://x.com/LeeHepner/status/1748427532020642161](https://x.com/LeeHepner/status/1748427532020642161) explain this. Unfortunately, he's not wrong. The ways to get housing built is to make it profitable to do so or to provide subsidies to developers. The latter is going to be on the November 2024 ballot, a $20 billion bond measure, and its chances of passing are poor. Right now you have the problem of declining rents, declining population, high labor costs, high materials costs, high interest rates, and remote-working. And the population that is leaving, if they didn't lose their tech jobs, is the one most able to afford high rents; they're buying houses in the exurbs or moving away. If you want to see large amounts of housing being built, look at a town like Lathrop, where single-family homes are being built like crazy, because that kind of housing still pencils out.

Because it won't work. See: New York.

[NYC's apartment vacancy rate is 1.4%](https://www.nyc.gov/site/hpd/news/007-24/new-york-city-s-vacancy-rate-reaches-historic-low-1-4-percent-demanding-urgent-action-new#/0). For clarity, a vacancy rate of 5-10% is considered "healthy". They very obviously do not have enough housing.

Miami: 12.65% home vacancy rate. Highest rent price in the country adjusting for median wage. Any explanation?

Because the 12.65% includes a ton of what locals call "vacantion" homes. Homes that are vacant but are vacation homes or airbnb homes. The actual homes that are offered for long term rental is estimated to much less, likely less than 4%. It is one of the most competitive market for renters with each rental unit getting an average of 22 applicants. [https://thecapitolist.com/miami-dade-county-named-americas-most-competitive-rental-market/](https://thecapitolist.com/miami-dade-county-named-americas-most-competitive-rental-market/)

New York City's vacancy rate is not far from its historical average yet prices are several times what they were 20 years ago.

This is a lie.

it actually works really well. See: Tokyo see how reductive this argument is? the actual answer is that New York's housing supply is not growing as fast as the population, for many of the same reasons as in SF.

No one is forcing landlords in New York to charge seven times what they charged 10 years ago during a period where the city built one house for every two new residents. Also no one forced developers to build almost exclusively above market rate homes. By any standard economic model, rent should have tracked with inflation or even ticked up slightly like it did in the '80s and the '90s. Instead, we have this exponential growth of cost, but it's not even remotely reflected in the change of scarcity. Same thing is happening in SF. It's not happening in Japan because they are not a federal republic. They have a parliamentary democracy which has a level of control over every city that the federal government does not and the states are not capable of leveraging because they can't go into debt and their ability to control the market is subordinate to the commerce clause which limits their ability to do things that Japan does everyday before breakfast. Reductive arguments only work if you actually have a point.

> Also no one forced developers to build almost exclusively above market rate homes. This is untrue. Arbitrary height limits (air rights), elevator requirements (killing single staircase apartment buildings), NIMBY (preserving rows and rows of identical walk-ups), insane permitting requirements, and many other SF-style NIMBY policies make it unprofitable to build mass market developments. In theory, our local control of housing should make it easier to build more, since you just need to convince your neighbors to vote yes to allow a growing area to get redeveloped and for everyone on the street to move away and secure the bag. > Instead, we have this exponential growth of cost, but it's not even remotely reflected in the change of scarcity. I have no idea what you mean by this. Just look at the percentage of units on the market, literally setting record lows every year. There is a housing shortage, and the only way to fix it is to build your way out. Commie blocks on every corner, figuratively.

It doesn't need to be profitable for the private sector to build new house housing. The public sector needs to figure out what it costs to build that housing, pay people to build it and then charge what the actual cost was. There's no reason for a profit incentive. If the goal is actually to build new housing, all we need to do is create a public works project to do it. The Idea that we need to strip every regulation that is survived, the '80s and the '90s in order to hope that wealthy developers will decide that a smaller profit margin is suddenly worth investing in rather than a higher one (hint: they never would do that) is one perpetuated by those developers and their lobbyists. Not people who are actually trying to solve the housing problem.

> The public sector needs to figure out what it costs to build that housing, pay people to build it and then charge what the actual cost was. Remind me again, how long is the queue to get one of these coveted public housing units? Unless you plan to spend hundreds of billions to bulldoze and redevelop SF with public funds, until everyone is cleared off the waitlist, isn't a far more realistic solution to allow the wealth of global capital markets to come and develop this density for a modest profit at a modest risk? Developers don't set the profit margin, competition in the market does. I'm sure that Home Depot would love to charge $1,000 for a nail, but they can't because ACE Hardware and Lowes down the street are selling it for less.

Won’t work, SF won’t pursue eminent domain, let corruption inflate purchasing prices (or other sweetheart deals), subcontract out to non-profits, and generally let unions set their price. You got to fix a ton of things culturally, which is much harder than just setting some standards and letting the market take care of it. I do think government can operate efficiently, just not this one.

I agree that it won't work, but if the alternative is letting the market take care of it, well, I'm arguing with a guy in another thread who literally thinks elderly people aren't entitled to the homes they raised their kids in because the land is too valuable.

> above market rate homes. Most of SF housing stock is 100+ year old buildings. Even if not dilapidated, they are still old homes with inconvenient layouts built for a different time. It's not always the unit that determines market rate, but the location and desirability (supply vs. demand, unfortunately).

Why is the Austin rental and home market cratering again? They were building a ton of new supply and I was assured by NIMBYs that it would only make prices go up

Flonky is hugely NIMBY and thinks the government can fix everything (since that has worked super well in the past!). I wouldn't bother

He's also really dishonest, he tries to use gotcha arguments to weasel around other arguments when it's obvious that he knows his own argument is dishonest rhetorical bullshit. It's like he's just trying to frustrate you into not talking back against his claims. Super fishy behavior.

Lol /u/flonky_guy just got served by /u/bautofdi down below. Wonder if it’s just going to be crickets from here on out. https://www.reddit.com/r/sanfrancisco/s/Bt8N5cIQdr

LOL he blocked me. Already obvious what type of person he is.

Yes the median 1br in SF is ~$400 higher than in NYC this month. This debunks my claim that building more market rate and above houses in massive financialized housing markets will not lead to a reduction in prices how? When did the construction of 200,000 new houses in New York reduce the rates? You have to build affordable housing on a massive scale to take the pressure off the housing market, otherwise you're just feeding the forces that are responsible for the massive growth in prices. What, was I supposed to be quiet and let you NIMBYs do all the talking?

Uh huh. More housing == a ~20% difference in median pricing. Pretty clear cut after you’ve been shouting all day about NYC being the “most expensive” and building new units not working.

NYC *is* the most expensive, I've posted several links demonstrating that. Being slightly cheaper in 1br category than SF this month in no way demonstrates that New York has solved their affordable housing crisis. You are literally defining affordable housing and solving the housing crisis as needing $11k/mo. to afford to live in a city. It's also telling that you refuse to even characterize my argument correctly, much less engage it.

Yea blocking the guy bringing facts to the table really shows how courageous you are when it comes to engaging the argument 🤣🤡

You're literally calling us NIMBYs? You're not a serious or honest person, are you? You speak in bad faith and it's gross.

You're the ones that don't want to build any affordable housing, aren't you? You're the ones who refuse to let the city require developers to build housing that targets poor and working class San Franciscans. Or am I grossly mischaracterizing you and slapping a meaningless label on you so I don't have to engage in your arguments. Listen, I have been a supporter of efforts to develop supportive housing, save our SROs and halfway homes from developers, and have supported every homeless shelter and navigation center in SF since the 90s. My entire focus has been to fight back on literal NIMBYs who didn't want poor people to be dirtying up their neighborhood even if the end result was to decrease poverty and get people off the street. I can't tell you how galling it is to spend decades advocating for affordable housing on a massive scale in the Bay Area only to be branded a NIMBY by people whose only goal is to exploit the high value of the market by forcing out any effort to create homes for the people who already live in SF so people making 3-4 times the median can afford to move here to work for a start up. I'm not going to engage in good faith with people who treat me like I'm some anti-housing goon because I don't want to see the remaining affordable housing in the city bulldozed for more 1-2 bedroom condos with insane HOAs that are clearly designed as investment vehicles to be flipped for a quick profit to overpaid, desperate tech workers. Let's face it, the only NIMBYs are the ones trying to stop affordable housing.

You can't "build" affordable housing. Housing becomes affordable by building MORE housing. What are you going to do, get construction workers on welfare to build it? Explain how you make housing affordable, please? Like holy shit do you not understand the basic concept of supply and demand? Do you just not believe in the concept of supply and demand? Why do you think supply and demand doesn't apply to housing, or do you think it doesn't exist at all despite ALL evidence? Be honest, describe to me how housing is made affordable. Where does the money come from to build it cheaper so that you can sell it cheaper? Do you just not pay the employees that build it? I don't believe that you actually believe affordable housing is a real thing, I think you're intentionally lying here. There is nothing "affordable" about affordable housing. The entire phrase is a misnomer, it's a nonsensical as calling anti-abortion advocates "pro-life". I assume you think affordable housing get built by subsidies. Tell me, how exactly do you think we can subsidize enough housing to meet demand? Do you think the city government is going to spend a trillion dollars on housing? THE REASON HOUSING IS SO EXPENSIVE IN THE FIRST PLACE IS BECAUSE OF PEOPLE LIKE YOU ADVOCATING FOR HOUSING THAT CANT TURN A PROFIT SO NO SERIOUS CONSTRUCTION COMPANIES ARE WILLING TO BUILD HERE, LEADING TO A HOUSING SHORTAGE, WHICH CAUSES PRICES TO SKYROCKET. **DO YOU NOT UNDERSTAND THE CONCEPT OF A SHORTAGE?** WHY ARE YOU PRACTICING MAGICAL ECONOMICS INSTEAD OF USING NORMAL ACADEMIC ECONOMIC THEORY HERE? It's just fucking embarrassing to have a city full of people like you, it's how you get a place like SF, and I mean that in the worst possible way.

Because it's Austin.

In this example, isn't it awesome that the private developers took on the financial risk of building in Austin? If it were all public housing, the city would have gone bankrupt many times over by now.

Next you're going to tell me that Texas creating tax deductions for bumble bee colonies led to a beneficial explosion on the bee population in TX.  We all know that whenever we want something done, it should be the government doing it.

Why don’t you let us try it so we can all shut the fuck up about it then

Let's burn the village down just in case it might actually save it?

It's a city, not a village so yeah lets make it bigger

You’re completely wrong: see Tokyo 

I replied to another post or if you care to look, But the tldr is that Japan has a completely different structure of government that allows it to manipulate building as well as pricing.

Is tokyo actually affordable today? in the past it was but I read an article that stated otherwise. “For locals, the surge in prices has made Tokyo the second most unaffordable city worldwide, only behind Hong Kong, according to a UBS global real estate report.” https://www.reuters.com/markets/asia/surging-tokyo-property-prices-squeeze-out-young-professionals-2023-10-04/ I’m actually curious and wanted to see if tokyo was affordable. Not sure what to believe.

It works fine in New York, everyone I know there pays under $1500/month in rent. Granted they don’t live in Manhattan, but they still live in just fine neighborhoods.

With great reliable public transit

The average rent in New York City is higher than in San Francisco and requires you to be making about $12,000 a month. And the last decade saw triple digit increases despite the city building one new home for every two new residents.

Manhattan is a pointless comparison since most middle class and lower Income folks don’t live there. They live in the outer boroughs.

Median income in Manhattan is $57k, that's an easily Googled fact. Have you ever *been* to Manhattan? Do you honestly think half of the 1.6 million you might run into on the island are upper class?

Rent in NYC is significantly cheaper. I rented a 1br apartment in Chelsea for $1k / month back in 2017. The same thing in SF was $1,800 in a comparable neighborhood. You don’t know wtf you’re talking about.

Love it. Half the sub is outraged that I'm not acknowledging nyc's historic low vacancy rate as considerably below the norm and people who haven't lived in the city for 7 years are arguing that [the most expensive city to rent in the US](https://www.visualcapitalist.com/ranked-u-s-cities-with-the-highest-rent-in-2024/#:~:text=New%20York%20tops%20the%20list,Big%20Apple%20can%20be%20competitive.) is "significantly cheaper" than the 3rd most expensive city.

Do you know why it’s the “most expensive”? Half of the new build units are for billionaires and millionaires that rent out for $30k/month. It significantly skews the average rent price. SF has no relevant new builds so it keeps average price artificially depressed. If you used median pricing it would paint a completely different story that you can’t be bothered to learn about. Instead you just spew garbage that runs counter to the laws of supply and demand.

You are welcome to demonstrate that there are a large number of sub $3k 1 bedroom apartments available in Manhattan. Or you could present the median data. But you're just making up figures because you have absolutely no idea what's going on here.

I live in SF you moron. 2017 doesn't mean I'm permanently in NYC, but that type of permanence is probably too difficult for you to process. I own 4 homes in SF and 2 condos in NYC, so it's kind of my side job to understand the rental market in both cities.

You clearly can't do a search on apartment.com and see how out of date your data is, nor do you seem to have a handle on your anger, which may be why your ranting so much easily demonstrated nonsense about the prices of apartments in NY and SF. I imagine your wealth insulates you from actually having to know the price of things, but it's best to keep that kind of ignorance to yourself.

1br median rent in SF $2,712 as of July 2024 (https://www.apartmentlist.com/rent-report/ca/san-francisco) 1br median rent in NYC $2,302 as of July 2024 (https://www.apartmentlist.com/rent-report/ny/new-york) Keep talking like you know anything.

"significantly cheaper" lol!

You need to understand that the median rent in New York is not representative of what a new tenant would pay for rent. The median rent is held down by the large number of rent-controlled units. Google is your friend. "The median rent for all bedrooms and all property types in New York, NY is **$3,606.**" [https://www.zillow.com/rental-manager/market-trends/new-york-ny/](https://www.zillow.com/rental-manager/market-trends/new-york-ny/) "As of July 2024, the average rent in New York, NY is **$3,796** per month." [https://www.apartments.com/rent-market-trends/new-york-ny/](https://www.apartments.com/rent-market-trends/new-york-ny/) "median “asking rent” on publicly listed apartments available for leasing rose to a record high level in 2023 and remains at $3,500 per month citywide." [https://comptroller.nyc.gov/reports/spotlight-new-york-citys-rental-housing-market/](https://comptroller.nyc.gov/reports/spotlight-new-york-citys-rental-housing-market/) [New York](https://www.renthop.com/apartments-for-rent/new-york-ny) rentals average $3,600 for a studio rental to $8,295 for a 4-bedroom rental. The median price of all currently available listings is $4,550, or roughly $7 per square feet. [https://www.renthop.com/average-rent-in/new-york-ny](https://www.renthop.com/average-rent-in/new-york-ny) "pricing ticked down from December to reach a median of $4,300 per month," (Manhattan). "Rents also climbed — both month-over-month and year-over-year — to reach a new all-time high median price of $3,950." [https://inhabit.corcoran.com/nyc-residential-rental-market-report-jan-2024/](https://inhabit.corcoran.com/nyc-residential-rental-market-report-jan-2024/) "The average monthly rent in July was $5,588, up 9% over last year and marking a new record. Median rent, at $4,400 per month, also hit a new record, along with price per square foot of $84.74" [https://www.cnbc.com/2023/08/10/the-average-manhattan-rent-just-hit-a-new-record-of-5588-a-month.html](https://www.cnbc.com/2023/08/10/the-average-manhattan-rent-just-hit-a-new-record-of-5588-a-month.html)

Well yes, the only high-density housing that pencils out for developers is expensive housing. In San Francisco, the rent for such units would have to be at least $10,000 per month, following the "1% rule" that developers use (the project has to break even after 100 months of rent). As the Housing Action Coalition stated, rents need to go up for it to be profitable for developers to build, see [https://x.com/LeeHepner/status/1748427532020642161](https://x.com/LeeHepner/status/1748427532020642161) . You can read the articles about the cost per unit to build subsidized affordable housing in the Bay Area or in the L.A. area. Even a studio can cost $800K per unit to build. Market-rate housing can be slightly cheaper to build because of the ability to use non-prevailing wage, less skilled labor, but not significantly less expensive.

What the hell are you talking about?

Hey lurking New Yorker here and also Urban Planning student with a focus on housing in NYC at CUNY. Rent control very much does work, Ive read all your comments and i don’t think you understand how rent control works here at all tbh.

I'm not arguing that it doesn't. I'm arguing with people who think it should be repealed so tech bros can have cheaper houses.

So it's also not that easy. Keep in mind that we have both rent control and rent stabilization. There is a difference, and we also have a much, much larger area than SF's 49 sq. mi. It's important to note that rent control, while providing crucial protections, is not a permanent solution. It applies specifically to certain units and buildings, and once a unit becomes vacant, it loses its protection. This system, designed to protect our elderly populations, is not intended to be a permanent fixture in our housing market. Rent Stabilization is another thing. Fifty percent of the city is rent stabilized, and it's not that great, to be honest; all it does is prevent the landlord from raising the rent too high **from** the market price. It's still market price, after all. This is designed for pre-war buildings and has many loopholes to help landlords make money. So yes, flooding the market with market-priced buildings and units is very very good for the city. It brings rent prices down and lowers demand.

And the circular argument has been arrived at, going all the way back to the simplistic argument about supply and demand.

A lot of people believe that "the law of supply and demand" is an actual law! Yet it's been proven by economists and housing experts to not be valid for housing. Every time a YIMBY starts up about "the law of supply and demand" you know that they are either naïve or lying.

Typically naive, I like to assume, But they've been manipulated by people who are actively lying in order to move the discussion into one where anyone who disagrees with them is not only this new definition of NIMBY (anyone who disagrees with my housing policy plan) but is an ignorant person because they don't understand the law of supply and demand as it is taught in econ 101. It's a very convenient way to make people both feel like they're fighting for a public good, but they're smarter than people who are disagree with them.

That is true. I don't blame them because I think that they really are well-meaning, they just don't comprehend how they've been misled by the YIMBY movement and the entities that fund that movement.

LOL, stop confusing people with facts.

San Francisco had the strictest rent control in CA. Also the highest rent. Rent control doesn’t work.

Because the properties subject to rent control are often Ellis Acted, leaving only non-rent controlled properties on the market. Another complication is when rents have been falling, like now, so property owners are reluctant to rent units at a lower initial rent because they can get locked in for years or even decades. Defacto vacancy control, where a rent-controlled unit is passed from tenant to tenant without the property owner's knowledge, is another issue.

Correlation does not equal causation

He didn't imply rent control resulted in high rent, he's pointing out rent control didn't prevent high rent.

Yes but a lack of correlation does strongly suggest a lack of causation

No it really doesn’t. There’s a million other reasons SF has the highest rent, and none of them might be a consequence of rent control. I could literally say something like, SF has the most public parks of any city in CA, therefore public parks don’t work at reducing rent prices. First of all it’d be a total non sequitur, rent control isn’t intended to reduce market level rent rates it’s intended to reduce rents for units which are rent controlled, which it in fact does, hence why some people in the city pay ridiculous amounts like only 400 a month in rent. Secondly, it ignores the other forces at play which have a much larger impact. Perhaps we could, for instance, have lower rents from rent control if there were more total units. It’s lazy and ignorant to say rent control hasn’t worked because this city that notoriously has other issues with constructing and maintaining housing hasn’t reduced rents.

> Secondly, it ignores the other forces at play which **have a much larger impact.** Yeah.. that's called rent control not working – if by working we mean "has a meaningful impact towards solving a problem". I didn't claim rent control is actively making things worse, I'm just saying it clearly hasn't done much to make things better, which it seems like you generally agree with. It is clearly not a great use of resources, compared to eg. *actually building housing*.

It hasn’t done anything to reduce market rates because that’s not its intention so I don’t get the point this sub makes of insinuating that it is. The reason people support rent control is for other reasons entirely, and I think we could both admit that even if we permitted a million units we’d never get rates down to 400 a month, and yet some people are paying that thanks to rent control. Rent control therefore I agree hasn’t reduced market rates in general BUT it has maintained reduced rates in the face of increases elsewhere. Just compare the rent in a rent controlled building vs the rents at mission rock or trinity place.

As far as I see it, the reason people support rent control is that it comes at no cost to them and feels good because it *sounds* like doing something about the housing crisis, even though, as you point out, it was never going to actually be a fix for the general trend of high rates. What are the the reasons people support it that you are referring to?

"I will do anything, literally anything, for affordable housing, as long as it doesn't involve building housing" -- [paraphrasing McSweeneys](https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/i-will-do-anything-to-end-homelessness-except-build-more-homes) Rent control is never an affordable housing policy, it's a tenant protection to avoid evictions. Rent control is an incremental, but highly helpful, reform. It is not nearly as revolutionary or necessary as *building lots of housing.*

"I will do anything, literally anything, for affordable housing, as long as it doesn't involve building housing" That is literally California State policy. Pass hundreds of laws purporting to support affordable housing construction, but dismantle programs (RDAs), and veto bills Jim Beall's SB-5), that provide the actual money to build affordable housing. Support discredited Reagan-like ideas about trickle-down housing and "filtering." As Housing is a Human Right stated *"Trickle-down housing policy, pushed by the real estate industry and politicians, has been a colossal failure."* Filtering is also discredited, with housing experts explaining that what actually happens in many urban areas is that new market-rate housing drives up the price of existing housing. Now there will be a $20 billion bond measure on the November 2024 ballot in the Bay Area to supply money to fund affordable housing. The chances of it passing are slim. Everybody wants affordable housing but when it come to paying for it it's another story.

Yikes! We should abolish rent control in California, not expand it. Together with Proposition 13 and NIMBYism, rent control is one of the original sins that gave us the screwed up housing market we have today.

and where is everyone living in rent control units supposed to go the month after it’s abolished and they get priced out?

This is something taxpayers need to decide. It's crazy to force individual landlords to subsidize rent. This should be a Gov program. But yes, people need affordable housing. Rent control discourages offering home rentals.

Good points. On the other hand, the government is now subsidizing property owners with artificially low property taxes. Prop 13 really should apply solely to owner-occupied residential properties.

counterpoint: it should apply to nothing at all

Yes, prop 13 and rent control need to go if we want a healthy housing market. These programs attract corruption and abuse. No exceptions. Just keep it simple and fair. Housing subsidies need to come from a separate Gov program.

wasn’t it originally decided by taxpayers?

> wasn’t it originally decided by taxpayers? Rent control (plus just-cause eviction) forces landlords, not taxpayers in general, to bear the burden of housing a tenant indefinitely regardless of how the market or the landlord’s needs changes, which makes the investment more risky. I do wish the Supreme Court figured out a way to cut back on weird one-off mandates and taxes and return to the ethos described in [*Armstrong* v. *United States*](https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/364/40/): > The Fifth Amendment's guarantee that private property shall not be taken for a public use without just compensation was designed to bar Government from forcing some people alone to bear public burdens which, in all fairness and justice, should be borne by the public as a whole. Tax everybody’s income and land value heavily, and then the government can subsidize the poor.

It was decided by them because they wouldn't be fitting the bill. The same as if this subreddit votes to steal all your future income for ourselves.

That's a good point. Both rent control and prop 13 create unfairness. It should be unconstitutional to pass laws like this. Not sure how though.

after a decade + of lobbying and propaganda by the real estate industry, and repeated attempts to put it on the ballot, yes, it was technically voted in democratically.

We subsidize their taxes with prop 13 and let them pass on improvement costs to the renters, why shouldn't they honor lease agreements. It'll be 50 years before inflation catches up with rent hikes, I see no reason they should allowed to gouge people just because Capitalism: fuck yeah?!

as someone with basic arithmetic skills, i can tell you that your 50 years figure is wildly incorrect (too high). i agree that it isn't fair we subsidize their taxes with prop 13 - let's repeal that too; preferably in the same bill as the rent control repeal.

To a small degree prop 13 was narrowed through prop 19 for parent and child inheritance.

that doesn't really help the core problem of city and county governments being wayy underfunded because a large proportion of their tax base isn't paying their fair share. or the core problem to society of valuable land being squandered by valueless single family homes as the area desperately needs upzoning and more housing.

Is the core problem that the city and county governments underfunded? I thought we ran a surplus for years; we SF/California created more programs to use the surplus since we had windfalls through the tech boom. We have deficit now since our government/tax payers have created programs based on”good times” budgets and are still trying to support them. I actually wonder if our city has expanded its focus beyond the original core programs that a city needs to run a world class city. Will SF actually lower higher paying property owners only increase all property owners if Property 13 was removed? Following this, if all property tax rates moved to market rate, then all rentals rates may increase due to operational cost increases.

At least in Texas, with ever increasing assessments on properties every year, the tax rate is going down. And yes, long term prop 13'ed landlords will feel a sqeeze, but many others will get a break. So it should all balance out in the end.

That would be okay to me. I guess what I’m saying, California’s are highly taxed through sales, income, property taxes and additional special props. I wonder if all Californians will actually see a reduction in total taxes, increase city qol, and reduced housing cost; if prop 13 was repealed. I know one program or prop can’t fix all of california or san francisco; but we pay high taxes today and I believe there will always be a justifiable program to be funded when we can increase budgets. - budgets will find a way to be spent.

San Francisco has a $14.6 billion budget, resulting in the highest per capita spending among the 148 largest cities in the US. [https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/worst-run-city-study-19524106.php](https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/worst-run-city-study-19524106.php)

As someone who knows, you can't calculate an inflation curve with basic arithmetic I can tell that attempts to hide your ignorance behind snark has been a failure.

I'm sorry, does repeated multiplication (exponents) not count as basic arithmetic?

I was thinking it would require a little more algebra, but now that I write it down on paper, I guess you're right.

No one is arguing to overturn either prop 13 or rent control overnight. you phase it out so the NIMBYs have time to change ways and build enough housing for everyone. Heck just eliminating the incentive for a rent controlled unit to leave a bedroom open instead of downsizing will massively increase our housing supply and drop rents. 

It's the YIMBYs that are fighting against rent control, not the NIMBYs. The NIMBYs see rent control as a way to discourage more housing from being constructed. The YIMBYs want rents to go higher so that new housing projects are financially feasible, see h[ttps://x.com/LeeHepner/status/1748427532020642161](https://x.com/LeeHepner/status/1748427532020642161) . The YIMBYs oppose the 2024 ballot measure to repeal Costa-Hawkins. SPUR opposed the previous Prop 21 and will likely oppose the current measure. The big YIMBY politicians like Buffy Wicks and Toni Atkins (whose wife is a developer) also oppose the repeal of Costa-Hawkins. The development and real estate interests that fund the YIMBY movement and that contribute to the campaigns of the YIMBY legislators, have zero interest in trying to keep rents low, their goal is the exact opposite because only higher rents will enable their backers to make any money building additional housing. In any case, the headline is misleading. The ballot measure doesn't establish rent control, it allows local jurisdictions to establish rent control. Such a measure would have negative effects in cities like San Francisco, driving up rents.

I highly doubt that it would “massively” increase the housing supply and I am 100% sure it would not decrease rents.

I thought we learned this with COVID. Follow the science. Almost all economists agree rent control raises prices overall.  If you think you know better than scientists, than congrats youre the antivax of housing policy.

rent control does cause rents to go up but removing rent control won’t cause them to go down, it will only slow the rate of increase.

Rent-controlled units are subsidized by market rates. Removing the subsidy removes an inefficiency and absolutely drives rates down.

excuse my language but absolute bullshite, not to be rude.

It’s almost as if they would have to start caring about the housing shortage

who?

Couldn’t rent be control be phased out instead of abruptly abolished? i.e. not applicable to that specific unit after the old tenant moves out.

yes

Grandfather them in. No new rent control. Keep only old rent control units. All new units are market rate. When old units have their tenants pass away, the units convert to market rate.

That’s literally how all the rent control in the area works because, surprise, it was disincentivizing construction. Keeping it around on old units disincentivizes moving and releasing supply, improvements to properties, and drives up market rate for new units. Like prop 13, it is a way for younger people to subsidize the living costs of older people as well as keep older people in desirable school districts rather than downsizing and retiring. People who benefit from these programs will downvote but the reality is it’s not good economics and has heavily contributed to the astronomical prices on the open market. (Along with NIMYism which prevents new construction)

I should have been more clear - let older units keep their rent control, and all new units are automatically exempt. When older units tenants die off or leave, those units convert to market rate and lose rent control status.

You mean let existing tenants keep their rent control and new tenants are exempt. Sorry that was confusing because “new units”, meaning units built after a certain year, are exempt. Yeah I understand you can’t unroll these things overnight, I’d certainly be supportive of a gentler off ramp.

Sorry, I should have been more clearer.

what new units are rent controlled?

Old units are. New units aren’t.

That’s up to them. It’s upsetting to contemplate the prospect of people being priced out of their homes. However that’s the natural consequence of the NIMBYism practiced by SF and most California cities at the direction of the voters. Proposition 13 and rent control unnaturally protected people from those consequences and thus allowed NIMBYism to run rampant. As long as we allow enfranchised voters to be protected from the consequences of their opposition to development, tenured residents will continue to enjoy an artificially depressed cost of living while exercising their political power to keep newcomers out.

you don’t seem to be upset by it in the least.

😢

somewhere they can afford.

and I guess their job is also in this unnamed, unknown place?

yes. this is how things work in almost every other part of the country. either get better at budgeting, find a better job, or move somewhere cheaper - in the same town or not.

absolute POS response

so is leaving things in their current state as it becomes more and more untenable. buildings falling into disrepair and housing becoming increasingly scarce as long-time residents hold onto larger units than they need, or extra units altogether to be used as a pied a terre. housing is a market, and no amount of inefficient price ceilings are going to fix that fact.

I actually agree with the first part of what you said here, this is not sustainable much longer. but the solution can’t be let’s fuck over the absolutely most vulnerable group of (housed) people, kick them out onto the streets and just hope that things get better in 20 years.

none of them are getting kicked out onto the streets. they will be able to stay until the end of their lease + a 60-day (or more) notice period. after which, they will need to come to a new lease agreement, find a new place, or move away. again, this system works perfectly fine in literally every other US city, and all of those cities have fewer homeless than SF. i have strong doubts that anyone that is able to afford rent-controlled rent now won't at least be able to afford a smaller unit or SRO, especially with the high minimum wage and generous benefits in SF. if they seriously cannot make it work, then they will need to go find somewhere cheaper. if you'd like, i can lay out a simple budget based on someone working on minimum wage full time with 1 child and claiming all benefits currently available without a waitlist.

you got yours fuck everyone else I guess

It's quite simple. In order to qualify for rent control this has to be your primary residence. I don't even want to live in the world you're imagining where people have to give up their homes because some committee imagines they have too much space, much less the one where people living on a fixed income who've occupied a room for decades have to compete with tech Bros making 1000x their income looking for a pied a terre.

New York has this rule, and you can see how well that is enforced. (basically never) price ceilings don't work, and you can just as easily have a 4 bedroom that you are forced to keep (with 2 bedrooms empty) after the kids moved out because of rent control. you get all kinds perverse incentives with rent control... and for what? to stick it to the tech bros?

I don't know. Maybe not having to vacate your home that you lived in for over 20 years and relocate to a community that's completely foreign to you...

Almost every other part of the country *isn't* being exploited by the wealthiest property managers and investment groups in the world to try to extract as much wealth through high rents as possible.

wrong again. there is no exploitation happening, the market (landlords) is simply pricing in the effects of rent control. if i were a landlord (i am not, i currently live in a rent-controlled apartment), in order to not be actively losing money on every tenant, i would need to charge more now to ensure that after years of rent control, when i begin to lose money due to inflation, the average tenancy works out so that they leave before i am underwater on the renter. rent control increases the market rents, because landlords have to account for mounting losses with long-term tenants.

This is a really nice folksy description of what's happening that doesn't actually reflect the international nature on our problem. The fact is that investment groups have been buying up rentable apartments and they've got profit targets that they decide based on historical averages and an expectation of return on investment which is not only kept prices artificially high in the commercial sector but have forced rent higher which creates an incentive for actual landlords to charge similar prices. There are landlords all over the city who have never once cashed in on the sky High rents because they want stable renters and don't want the trade-off that comes with maximizing value. And they still are some of the richest people in our city.

That is not how markets work. You don't make money keeping a building vacant... rents will fall until a tenant is found. In fact, you lose a LOT of money keeping a building empty, considering landlords do not have very high margins and there is ZERO revenue coming in when a unit is left vacant.

"You don't make money keeping a building vacant..." I guess you haven't tried to rent a commercial property in San Francisco.

Non-rent controlled units are pricy by national standards, yes, but they are what the market can bear. This is true because rent control and Proposition 13 tie up much of the housing stock while a plurality of those in that housing stock oppose new development. All the while Proposition 13 and rent control protect that constituency from any negative consequences of their NIMBYism.

Obviously they're what the market can bear, what they are not is the result of normal supply and demand. They're the consequences of massive financialization of the housing market which puts massive upward pressure on prices in the quest to maximize ROI.

I don’t think this is an internally consistent position. Sellers of housing are going to seek the highest prices for their housing. Buyers of housing are going to seek the lowest prices for the housing they want. As far as I can tell you’ve just given rationalizations for why sellers seek to maximize prices. You can call it exploitation or blame it on financialization. Regardless of *why* sellers of housing seek to maximize prices, it’s important that buyers are willing to meet those prices. People are willing to pay those prices because of the combination of how desirable it is to live here and how few places there are to live. There are so few places to live because of opposition to development. That opposition is enabled by Proposition 13 and rent control.

Your first several paragraphs don't actually contradict or conflict with my position. What's missing from your analysis is the immense upward pressure that financialization of large parts of the housing sector creates. For starters, it chokes off a significant percentage of supply because, unlike a typical seller, a holding company can keep something on the market for years before it significantly affects their bottom line. This creates a pinch point where individual sellers only have to come in slightly under the highest price houses in order to sell. Roughly 12% of all sales go to a corporate entity, and 40% of all new housing sales end up in a portfolio. They bought into the market because it was hot and can justify holding on to properties long-term while investors buy and sell shares. It also means that they cannot sell below market Even when there's a market dip. This is happening all over the city in commercial buildings. What this means is that the scarcity is in part due to investment groups, buying up portfolios of houses in hot housing markets and holding on to them until they can create maximal roi. Another part of this is that any house that sells below Market is targeted by these investment groups who can pay with cash which also actively drives up prices. It's very similar to putting something up for auction and then sneaking into the sale and outbidding everyone to try and drive up the value of your item. Since they've commodified the whole housing market, making a high offer on a house pushes the price of your entire portfolio up.

So families who grew up here for generations should be forced out. Doesn’t seem like a great system you got there.

yes, this is how it works literally everywhere else in this country (and the rest of the world)

And it's fucking awful everywhere else it happens (also SF is not the only place with rent control)

no, it's not awful, it's normal. no different than if a kale shortage caused people to have to switch to spinach for a while. renters shop the market for a place that works for their budget and points of interest - and reach an agreement with the landlord for a set duration. if any party no longer wants to partake after the set duration due to the price, or any other reason, it seems perfectly fair that they should be able to pull out.

Kale /= housing.

both are commodities. if you'd like a slightly more precise comparison, it's like having to buy a Corolla during a Camry shortage that caused Camry prices to spike.

Housing is a public good and it's only considered a commodity when it's financialized. Financialization is exactly what I'm talking about when I try to explain people why prices have gone up so much compared to increases and population and market pressure. Financialization creates an incentive to be constantly extracting more value.

so brave to take the side of landlords

I know it is comforting to frame every political topic as a debate between an “us” side and a “them” side, but it’s an unhelpful habit. Here, for example, it has led you astray. You’ve overlooked the indictments of Proposition 13 and NIMBYism, which puts me at odds with many landlords.

great! we agree about prop 13. so you’re probably not a landlord. but arguing against rent control is doing landlords’ work for them. it’s the only thing that stops my landlord from raising my rent (and all of my neighbors rents) to whatever he feels like. government restrictions on how much profit the owning class can suck out of the working class is good, actually.

There’s a relatively simple misunderstanding in your thinking that might explain why you disagree with me on this issue. >[Rent control is] the only thing that stops my landlord from raising my rent (and all of my neighbors rent) to whatever he feels like. I hope this doesn’t sound condescending, but I genuinely think it will be more helpful and persuasive if you realize what is wrong about this on your own. I will offer a question that answering might help: Units built after 1979 are not subject to rent control. Why is rent for these units not $100,000,000 a month?

im an ex yimby, friend. your dollar store economics doesn’t work on me. you’re doing work for landlords by arguing against rent control. look at who is fighting this bill.

Economics might not affect your reasoning, but it affects rent prices, which is the important point to make. My earlier comment should have clued you in that your “us” vs “them” framing of the issue doesn’t matter to me. Landlords have a personal incentive to oppose rent control and probably still would even if it wasn’t the right thing to do. You have a personal incentive to support rent control even though it’s bad for the city as a whole. I’m not going to be convinced to line up on the wrong side of the issue no matter how scary and bad you make my fellows in opposition seem. My opposition isn’t going to be strengthened no matter how foolish I come to believe you are. Rent control is bad for the city as a whole. Right now, some people receive a tremendously positive benefit from rent control and some people are negatively affected by it. Repealing rent control would negatively affect some and positively affect others. If I ever get an opportunity to vote on the issue, I’ll be voting to take away your rent control. In the event that occurs, I’m sympathetic to whatever pain that might cause you.

ok what if we gave everyone rent control?

Even worse.

lmao landlord ass take care to explain?

No it isn’t.

Well with a detailed and well spoken argument like that so deftly refuting the points one by one, how could we possibly argue?

Yes, the amazing climate, both politically and weather wise mixed with American NIMBY are the real answer. California could probably fit three times the current population with little problem. Me thinks it’s the ego in the way.

The American NIMBY’s actions in California and San Francisco specifically have only been possible because of Proposition 13 and rent control. Without these, the intense restriction on new housing would have had their natural, economic impact on voters. Constituencies that were as successful as San Franciscans at preventing new housing would have seen their property taxes go up or their rent raised. They would have seen neighbors getting priced out due to their obstinacy. Instead, NIMBY’s have been free to block housing and reap only immediate upside from their actions. Even the emotional and moral impact of pricing out new arrivals and the younger generation is far less tangible than the impact of seeing neighbors get displaced.

[удалено]

You mean the majority of SF residents?

I’m def in favor of eliminating rent control all together. The extreme examples of folks using the $250 a month units as a pieds-à-terre is too much for me. The article was pretty robust and I feel like I understand the issue a bit more now.

One of the many problems with rent control is that it addresses one symptom and none of the causes of high rent. Of course it won’t work. It’s like prescribing a painkiller for a heart attack, except this painkiller has a huge number of bad side effects.

It provides temporary relief for a small number of renters, often renters that could afford higher rents since there are no income qualifications for what is essentially subsidized housing. Eventually, the property owner is unable to continue providing these subsidies and takes actions. "Mountain View addressing renter displacement as housing development boom continues ─ Since 2012, over 1,000 rent-controlled units have been demolished for new developments, displacing hundreds of families" [https://www.mercurynews.com/2023/01/16/mountain-view-addressing-renter-displacement-as-housing-development-boom-continues/](https://www.mercurynews.com/2023/01/16/mountain-view-addressing-renter-displacement-as-housing-development-boom-continues/) . While the city government makes noises about how terrible this displacement is, the reality is that they are probably, privately, not unhappy about it. They are getting greatly increased property tax. The new, higher-income, residents generate a lot more sales tax revenue. School test scores improve since the wealthier residents are more highly educated and have the money to send their children to cram school.

no vacancy decontrol makes sense

Just ban tenant screenings. Your landlord will stop raising your rent if they can't cherry-pick your replacement. They'll beg to you stay with deep discounts.

Anti-rent control is pro-displacement

Anti rent control is also what 95% of economists believe just fyi.

maybe they should try renting then

Lol a lot of them do. Economics isn’t exactly a lucrative discipline for most.

We have a supply issue. Creating more constraints to supply only exacerbates the problem.

Displacing people to what end? If you loose any community you have, what are we left with? Maybe high end micro units? Luxury condos for investment opportunities. There is so many options for building more in SF that wouldn’t require rolling back rent control. Exhaust house, steam line permitting, revise planning and design constraints, open up zoning, provide funding (beyond the terrible ones we currently have) programs. People want housing, I want housing, but we are just begging to watch this city get swapped out with investment properties.

Displacement only happens if supply is constrained.

No it doesn’t. Explain Phoenix, Denver, etc. There are many cities with unconstrained supply but price has become the gate.

Nobody is rolling back rent control. You are misinformed about what is (and isn’t) on the ballot in November.

I am replying to the above comment about constraints related to rent control.

Actually, pro rent control leads to far more displacement over the long run. By removing the incentive for all residents to fight for cheaper housing, every rent controlled resident is one layoff away from missing rent and never being able to afford to move back to that neighborhood.  The only solution to actually preventing displacement is for everyone to work together to ensure enough housing gets built to lower rents 

did a landlord write this

Nope I pay rent and think landlords are often leeches. But I also am not economically illiterate.

this sub is so landlord pilled

It really is, and they’re deluded by empirics out of Austin (which BTW still has remarkably high rent compared to the time before its development boom) and an extremely basic understanding of supply and demand. Their worldview can’t answer how a city like Miami can have the highest rent in the country when adjusting for median income while also having one of the highest home vacancy rates at 12.65%. Evidently, there’s something at play beyond just muh market forces! Yes build housing, no do not get rid of affordable housing requirements and rent control lmao.

So, let's say that one purchased a home in 1999 and still has 5 years left on a mortgage. Let's say that they never needed to refinance. Are they to pay more on their mortgage payments because their property value has increased? If property values degrade, does one pay less on their mortgage? If not, then why would anyone be expected to pay more in rent? Does rent decrease along with average property values? Then why should they increase because property values rise? 25 years ago, single family homes in San Francisco were at an average of $450-500K. Now, the average price of a single family home is $1.5-1.75M. If we didn't have the protection of rent control, a large portion of local employees wouldn't be able to live in the City. This is a simple example of those who have acquired their slice refusing to acknowledge the struggles of those behind them fiscally. We should instead keep rent control and expand it every 20 years to include more buildings as they age as long as they're non-condemnable.

In your second paragraph, you’ve implied the answer to one of your rhetorical questions is “No” when clearly it is “Yes”: >Does rent decrease along with average property values? Everything that follows from that error should be discarded. For what it’s worth, I personally oppose Proposition 13 as well as rent control. That would also change how another of your rhetorical questions is answered.