Rent control and housing

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Rent control and housing

H.P. Hovercraft: Jan 12, 2004; one thing a computer can do that most humans can't is be sealed up in a cardboard box and sit in a warehouse; Slippery Tilde

H.P. Hovercraft posted:

Contradictory statements, nonsensical logic. Very poor effort. See me after class.

What part, specifically, do you disagree with? I interned at a county zoning office for a few months before I realized I needed a drastic career change, so I don't know what part you're struggling with. TIFs and TADs are well known mechanisms for accomplishing a thing on the local level.

boner confessor fucked around with this message at 22:28 on Oct 16, 2014

# ? Oct 16, 2014 22:25

icantfindaname: Jul 1, 2008

icantfindaname posted:

They didn't freeze taxes for the rich, they froze taxes for middle class white Republican homeowners (who then became rich because they didn't have to pay any property tax). These things are fundamentally related. The people who will benefit from property tax freezes are not the poor, it's people who own property

I'm not super familiar with the specifics of Prop 13, but doesn't it freeze taxes for the rich on the business side of things? I thought there was an issue with business using shady practices when transferring ownership of real estate to keep the tax rates super low. Of course that still doesn't change the fact that the poor get nothing out of it.

# ? Oct 16, 2014 22:28

boner confessor: Apr 25, 2013; by R. Guyovich

icantfindaname posted:

That doesn't help the poor. Poor people don't own houses. Your plan helps the homeowning middle class, not the poor.

There are many cities where poor people own houses. Believe it or not.

icantfindaname posted:

So.....

You're going to fund infrastructure projects .... by reducing revenue?

Are you Ronald Reagan IRL?

The idea is that you freeze revenues collected at the current level, and allocate any future growth towards the infrastructure project. It's the exact same as if you got a raise, but you saved anything beyond your previous income level. This way you can set money aside while still living on the expenses you had last year.

The anti-gentrification TIF would simply forego that revenue entirely, as a subsidy for the protected class (poor homeowners).

boner confessor fucked around with this message at 22:32 on Oct 16, 2014

# ? Oct 16, 2014 22:30

Zeitgueist: Aug 8, 2003; by Ralp

GhostofJohnMuir posted:

I'm not super familiar with the specifics of Prop 13, but doesn't it freeze taxes for the rich on the business side of things? I thought there was an issue with business using shady practices when transferring ownership of real estate to keep the prices super low. Of course that still doesn't change the fact that the poor get nothing out of it.

Yeah Prop 13 also covers commercial real estate so you have stuff like golf courses paying tiny levels of tax, and businesses change ownership less obviously and often than private residences.

The "grandma's gonna lose her beach house" stuff is mostly getting the less rich riled up. The poor pay for the hosed up tax structure in CA through regressive fees and sales taxes.

# ? Oct 16, 2014 22:30

icantfindaname: Jul 1, 2008

icantfindaname posted:

By definition those people aren't as poor as the poorest, so what is the problem exactly with them paying property tax? Like I said, if they're forced out by gentrification they're not necessarily being forced into lovely housing.

Basically, nobody has actually bothered to explain why gentrification is a bad thing to begin with. Most of the complaints about it seem to be coming as much from middle class homeowners being priced out as they are from actual poor people. I don't really give a poo poo about white middle class people getting priced out of Brooklyn, sorry

The only real problem I see is people like the janitors, line cooks, bus drivers, ect. getting priced out of anywhere near the places where they work and the time and transportation costs they have to pay to get their jobs. Frankly I find the stuff about the 'character' of neighborhoods to be pretty unompelling, though I guess in an idealized world everyone could afford to live in whatever rad neighborhood they liked.

# ? Oct 16, 2014 22:47

Ardennes: May 12, 2002

icantfindaname posted:

By definition those people aren't as poor as the poorest, so what is the problem exactly with them paying property tax? Like I said, if they're forced out by gentrification they're not necessarily being forced into lovely housing.

Basically, nobody has actually bothered to explain why gentrification is a bad thing to begin with, aside from the useless leftist 'everything is bad because everyone hing is part of the capitalist system'. Certainly nobody has explained how preventing it will have any positive effects. Most of the complaints about it seem to be coming as much from middle class homeowners being priced out as they are from actual poor people. I don't really give a poo poo about white middle class people getting priced out of Brooklyn, sorry

The issue being that jobs/infrastructure/opportunity in the city center itself and as the poor are pushed to the margins, their access to them is decreased especially since most American cities have miserable public transportation especially away from the central city.

Prince George Maryland is a good example of what happens and it isn't pretty. Also, plenty of poor people are being priced out quickly, hell the demographics of Washington DC are rapidly changing year by year. That said, you use "leftist" as a empty insult, so who knows.

Basically America is Europeanizing, people with wealth and power live in the center with services and the surbubs are ghettos. The riots that happened in Paris happened at the margins of the city not in the center.

Ardennes fucked around with this message at 22:55 on Oct 16, 2014

# ? Oct 16, 2014 22:50

Enigma89: Jan 2, 2007; by CVG

icantfindaname posted:

By definition those people aren't as poor as the poorest, so what is the problem exactly with them paying property tax? Like I said, if they're forced out by gentrification they're not necessarily being forced into lovely housing.

Let's say I'm a retired person living on a fixed income. I own my own home, as I bought it in 1960 and paid it off in 1990. This is actually a common scenario in many low income neighborhoods with a large stock of single family residences. My house is valued at $90k, which leads to a tax bill of $900.

Suddenly, the homes around me start getting bought up by young people. This increases the value of my home through the magic of hedonic markets to a respectable $160k. Hooray! The millage rate remains the same, so now my yearly tax bill is $1600. Boo. I can no longer afford to pay the tax on my home and might as well sell. Hopefully I can use this money to purchase another home somewhere else at an equivalent quality of life. Good luck with that when homes in decent neighborhoods are getting bought up.

They're not necessarily being forced into lovely housing, it's just likely.

icantfindaname posted:

Basically, nobody has actually bothered to explain why gentrification is a bad thing to begin with. Most of the complaints about it seem to be coming as much from middle class homeowners being priced out as they are from actual poor people. I don't really give a poo poo about white middle class people getting priced out of Brooklyn, sorry

A lot of folks ITT are talking about middle class people in the stupidly inflated markets of NYC and SF. I'm talking about what's happening in most every other non-rust belt American city.

Gentrification is the natural consequence of white flight. In most American cities, white wealth fled from neighborhoods, leading to a lowered income status quo. Jobs fled at the same time, meaning the non-white middle class in these neighborhoods was likely to get poorer. Decades later, wealth is no longer afraid of mixed race neighborhoods and is returning to take advantage of relatively cheap homes in cities.

This is a good thing in the long run, as long as two outcomes happen. Ideally, this growth in the market stimulates the development of more positive urban development, and not just cheap autocentric suburbs. Also ideally, lower income people don't get chased out of decent neighborhoods into lovely neighborhoods.

When I say lovely neighborhoods, I mean first and second ring suburbs. These are neighborhoods that were built roughly 1930-1960, primarily accessible only by car. These neighborhoods tend to have decaying housing stock, lowering their rental value and making them more attractive to the poorest folks. Unfortunately, where the urban ghetto at least had bus access and strong social networks, suburban ghettos are more difficult and expensive to navigate - meaning that it's harder for you to find a job, and harder to participate in community life.

Enigma89 posted:

This may be nice for people who don't move but for those that do it's a hardship.

Yes, but there's very little you can do about that from a legislative standpoint. You'd have to actively interfere with the market, not just subsidize select persons.

# ? Oct 16, 2014 22:56

icantfindaname: Jul 1, 2008

Ardennes posted:

The issue being that jobs/infrastructure/opportunity in the city center itself and as the poor are pushed to the margins, their access to them is decreased especially since most American cities have miserable public transportation especially away from the central city.

Prince George Maryland is a good example of what happens and it isn't pretty. Also, plenty of poor people are being priced out quickly, hell the demographics of Washington DC are rapidly changing year by year. That said, you use "leftist" as a empty insult, so who knows.

So build public transportation then? Once again you didn't explain why gentrification is bad, but a lack of public transportation.

And yes, this line of thinking is the quintessentially leftist 'well, I've determined that the actual solution to this problem is too hard to achieve, so instead I'll advocate a half-solution at best that may or may not actually make things worse, and get pissy when people say it's a bad idea'

# ? Oct 16, 2014 22:56

boner confessor: Apr 25, 2013; by R. Guyovich

icantfindaname posted:

So build public transportation then? Once again you didn't explain why gentrification is bad, but a lack of public transportation.

Public transportation is expensive as hell and doesn't help people who cross into the wrong jurisdictions. If I lose my home in Urban County and find a rental out in Flykicker Country twenty miles away, it doesn't help me if the residents of Flykicker Country don't participate in the regional mass transit program.

# ? Oct 16, 2014 23:00

icantfindaname: Jul 1, 2008

icantfindaname posted:

And yes, this line of thinking is the quintessentially leftist 'well, I've determined that the actual solution to this problem is too hard to achieve, so instead I'll advocate a half-solution at best that may or may not actually make things worse, and get pissy when people say it's a bad idea'

What's the point in even having a discussion about what the best policy is if people shut down any suggestion that may take some effort?

# ? Oct 16, 2014 23:03

Enigma89: Jan 2, 2007; by CVG

icantfindaname posted:

So build public transportation then? Once again you didn't explain why gentrification is bad, but a lack of public transportation.

And yes, this line of thinking is the quintessentially leftist 'well, I've determined that the actual solution to this problem is too hard to achieve, so instead I'll advocate a half-solution at best that may or may not actually make things worse, and get pissy when people say it's a bad idea'

The issue is we are talking about the United States where investment infrastructure is minimal while gentrification is happening in real time. Also even if the US had amazing public transit, there is still going to be a disparity of other services and jobs. If you want to equalize transit and services across the board...fine but that really isn't a easy quick fix either.

Also, that is a profoundly lame strawman, I mean embarrassingly so. It also doesn't make much sense, especially since leftists are happy to have much better public transportation and services.

Ardennes fucked around with this message at 23:18 on Oct 16, 2014

# ? Oct 16, 2014 23:11

Cicero: Dec 17, 2003; Jumpjet, melta, jumpjet. Repeat for ten minutes or until victory is assured.

LemonDrizzle posted:

I don't think I've ever heard of a rent control scheme that, when applied to a market with a genuine housing shortage, produced a more equitable outcome than would have been achieved by just letting the market do its thing. If you have a shortage of housing in places where people want to live, it necessarily follows that at least some people will be unable to live there and will quite reasonably be pissed off about the situation and regard it as deeply unfair. You can't eliminate that unfairness without building more housing (or making it more attractive to live elsewhere in the city/country), all you can do is decide who gets the lovely end of the stick.

Congratulations! The Cato Institute totally agrees with you.

You might remember them from their "study" last year claiming that poor people have it totally easy, really.

# ? Oct 17, 2014 00:12

icantfindaname: Jul 1, 2008

H.P. Hovercraft posted:

Congratulations! The Cato Institute totally agrees with you.

You might remember them from their "study" last year claiming that poor people have it totally easy, really.

So you have examples of rent control that produced successful outcomes? Or are you just saying that because the Cato Institute said something, that something must be wrong?

# ? Oct 17, 2014 00:15

EtaBetaPi: Aug 11, 2008

H.P. Hovercraft posted:

Congratulations! The Cato Institute totally agrees with you.

You might remember them from their "study" last year claiming that poor people have it totally easy, really.

There's always going to be an issue with housing in cities if you don't build more, any other solution will either involve rationing by money or by time waiting in a queue.

# ? Oct 17, 2014 00:18

boner confessor: Apr 25, 2013; by R. Guyovich

icantfindaname posted:

So fix jurisdictional issues regarding public transit then.

See here:

What's the point in even having a discussion about what the best policy is if people shut down any suggestion that may take some effort?

I... don't think you realize how incredibly unrealistic it is to 'just fix jurisdictional issues'. Pointing out that it's quite difficult to walk across an ocean is not shutting down or giving up.

"Look, chronic hunger and poverty is easy. Just give people all the free food and money they need! What's so hard about that? Typical leftist, why are you so quick to admit defeat?" If only it were that easy...

# ? Oct 17, 2014 00:20

Freakazoid_: Jul 5, 2013; Buglord

I was under the impression rent control meant that you couldn't charge more than x amount based on y square footage of the rental property. Am I wrong on that? It seems like that should be how it's handled.

Even then, I'd rather see each home providing shelter for somebody than nobody. I believe the US still has a significant amount of shadow inventory that could easily house every homeless person right now. Even if rent control causes a problem elsewhere, the problem it causes cannot be worse than someone without an adequate place to shelter them from the elements and actually participate in the economy.

# ? Oct 17, 2014 00:22

boner confessor: Apr 25, 2013; by R. Guyovich

Cicero posted:

It always seemed to me like this was because of how few total units they were allowed to make. If you're only allowed to produce a thousand cars a year, obviously you're going to go for the high end.

Sometimes, but also just as a nature of the profit motive you're more likely to sell cars that net you $10k in profit rather than $1k in profit. It's not just artificially capped supply, developers are just much more prone to target the higher end market for something as expensive as new housing construction.

Cicero posted:

Developers can't manufacture demand for arbitrarily-priced properties out of thin air; if that was the case, how would you explain lower-priced housing in cheaper parts of the country? Are the developers in cheaper places like Texas or Georgia just huge morons who are physically incapable of making luxury properties? Yes, demand in places like SF is very high, but it's not infinite.

quote:

The primary reason for lack of affordable housing is that in high demand markets, developers chase the most lucrative customers. Very few developers target the middle and low income brackets, housing for these demographics tends to trickle down from high to low as the area becomes undesirable for whatever reason (this is why first- and second-generation suburbs are the new ghettos).

Cheaper parts of the country tend not to have housing affordability problems.

boner confessor fucked around with this message at 00:43 on Oct 17, 2014

# ? Oct 17, 2014 00:24

wateroverfire: Jul 3, 2010

Cicero posted:

It always seemed to me like this was because of how few total units they were allowed to make. If you're only allowed to produce a thousand cars a year, obviously you're going to go for the high end.

The D&D response was along the lines of, "even if you let developers build as much as they want, they would make nothing but luxury condos 24/7", which makes no sense to me. There's only so much demand for those condos, because not everyone can afford them. Developers can't manufacture demand for arbitrarily-priced properties out of thin air; if that was the case, how would you explain lower-priced housing in cheaper parts of the country? Are the developers in cheaper places like Texas or Georgia just huge morons who are physically incapable of making luxury properties? Yes, demand in places like SF is very high, but it's not infinite.

Anyway, I kind of like the idea of "you're allowed to build taller/denser if you're making middle-class/affordable housing". That means there's a natural tradeoff, where developers CAN build luxury condos if they want to, but they may also be able to make comparable profits on cheaper housing since they could build more on the same land.

You're assuming in this post that real estate developers are rational, which we know is not the case.

# ? Oct 17, 2014 00:40

say no to scurvy: Nov 29, 2008; It is always Scurvy Prevention Week.

LemonDrizzle posted:

I don't think I've ever heard of a rent control scheme that, when applied to a market with a genuine housing shortage, produced a more equitable outcome than would have been achieved by just letting the market do its thing. If you have a shortage of housing in places where people want to live, it necessarily follows that at least some people will be unable to live there and will quite reasonably be pissed off about the situation and regard it as deeply unfair. You can't eliminate that unfairness without building more housing (or making it more attractive to live elsewhere in the city/country), all you can do is decide who gets the lovely end of the stick.

Money talks bullshit walks.

icantfindaname posted:

So you have examples of rent control that produced successful outcomes? Or are you just saying that because the Cato Institute said something, that something must be wrong?

Now this one I don't understand. Rent control exists. There are people who live in apartments and pay less than market value for them.

# ? Oct 17, 2014 08:40

GaussianCopula: Jun 5, 2011; Jews fleeing the Holocaust are not in any way comparable to North Africans, who don't flee genocide but want to enjoy the social welfare systems of Northern Europe.

say no to scurvy posted:

Now this one I don't understand. Rent control exists. There are people who live in apartments and pay less than market value for them.

The success criterium is that you are able to redistribute wealth (from the owner to the renter) with rent control?
It's like saying "we invented this new tax, people pay it, success!".

# ? Oct 17, 2014 09:38

LemonDrizzle: Mar 28, 2012; neoliberal shithead

say no to scurvy posted:

Now this one I don't understand. Rent control exists. There are people who live in apartments and pay less than market value for them.

Yes, various rent control schemes exist. Do they produce a fairer outcome than you would get if you simply had those apartments going to the highest bidder in situations where there is a significant housing shortage? Are they more effective than an uncontrolled rental market at promoting the building of new housing to alleviate the shortage that presumably prompted their introduction in the first place? There have certainly been rent control schemes for which the answer to both questions is generally accepted to be "no" - Sweden's current system and the regulations adopted in the UK during the early 20th century both spring to mind - can you name any for which the opposite is true?

# ? Oct 17, 2014 09:52

OwlBot 2000: Jun 1, 2009

A few things that may be getting missed:
1.) rent control isn't just about housing supply, but creating stable neighborhoods for people to live and grow in.
2.) the supply of housing may or may not increase when rent control is lifted, but what about the supply of affordable housing? If units are selling for higher than whatever the rent control cap was set to, then rent control was actually doing its job where the market didn't and still won't.
3.) building high-end complexes (often city-subsidized) results in a large expenditure but also a large long-term profit for property developers, but it doesn't necessarily lower housing prices for other, cheaper apartments.

OwlBot 2000 fucked around with this message at 14:20 on Oct 17, 2014

# ? Oct 17, 2014 14:18

Guy DeBorgore: Apr 6, 1994; Catnip is the opiate of the masses; Soiled Meat

OwlBot 2000 posted:

2.) the supply of housing may or may not increase when rent control is lifted, but what about the supply of affordable housing? If units are selling for higher than whatever the rent control cap was set to, then rent control was actually doing its job where the market didn't and still won't.

Good thing prices don't stay fixed in markets then. Someone will be able to afford to live in the new properties, even if it's just Mr. Moneybags. And Mr. Moneybags was presumably living somewhere before he moved into the new properties. And the place he just moved out of is now empty, and facing a housing market with a larger supply than there was before, so presumably its rent will go down... unless there's still a housing shortage, in which case, build more houses?

I can think of two reasons why rent might be too high in a city:

1. Not enough places to live
2. People don't have enough money to pay it (and landlords would rather shut down than rent out at an affordable price for some reason).

If (1) is the case then rent control will be counterproductive. If it's (2) then there's some external factor causing the mismatch, and that's what needs to be addressed. But how many cities are there with both a large population who can't afford housing and a large amount of vacant apartments? I don't think that's common in the first world. In the long run a landlord would always prefer that *someone*'s renting out an apartment, even if they pay the rent by collecting cans.

# ? Oct 17, 2014 15:12

computer parts: Nov 18, 2010; PLEASE CLAP

Guy DeBorgore posted:

Good thing prices don't stay fixed in markets then. Someone will be able to afford to live in the new properties, even if it's just Mr. Moneybags. And Mr. Moneybags was presumably living somewhere before he moved into the new properties. And the place he just moved out of is now empty

Unless he's just buying/renting a second property.

# ? Oct 17, 2014 15:13

OwlBot 2000: Jun 1, 2009

New York, London and SF have lots of apartment spaces owned by people who live elsewhere and rarely visit. It's often an investment vehicle or status symbol more than it is housing in "global cities".

# ? Oct 17, 2014 15:25

Guy DeBorgore: Apr 6, 1994; Catnip is the opiate of the masses; Soiled Meat

Surely most people with multiple properties are renting them out, though? I know some of the ultra-rich will keep an empty condo in New York that they only use two weeks out of the year but I can't imagine they make up a substantial chunk of the housing market.

But even if they did I'm not sure how rent controls would help with that? I'm imagining a city where, say, 10% of the housing is owned by absentee jet-setters, but there's still a large market of poor people who want to rent and can't. That's still a problem of too little supply that could just be fixed by letting developers build a bunch more houses. The jet-setters will still have a finite demand for new luxury condos, even in this dystopia where they've bought up 10% of the city and left it vacant for some reason, and once that demand is satisfied developers will build less-profitable housing for poor people.

Or you could just use taxes and regulations to disincentivize people from buying houses and then not living in them. I think some cities already do this? That would increase the housing supply at the expense of the ultra-rich, which seems fine by me.

# ? Oct 17, 2014 15:51

LemonDrizzle: Mar 28, 2012; neoliberal shithead

OwlBot 2000 posted:

New York, London and SF have lots of apartment spaces owned by people who live elsewhere and rarely visit. It's often an investment vehicle or status symbol more than it is housing in "global cities".

"Lots" isn't terribly precise; unless you know how many apartments of this sort there are in relation to the total housing stock and the total demand, you can't really say what kind of impact this has globally. However, there are data for London, courtesy of the national housing charity Shelter - the city has 53,000 second homes in a total dwelling stock of around 3.4m, so around 1.5% of London's dwellings are second homes. For comparative purposes, London is expected to need around 165,000 new homes over the next five years so even if all the second homes were seized and forcibly redistributed, it wouldn't solve the problem. More to the point, most of those second homes are small apartments owned by people who work in the city and live in their apartment during the week but go back to their main country home over the weekend. By doing that, they're taking pressure off the city's housing market; if anything, they're helping to alleviate the housing shortage rather than exacerbating it.

# ? Oct 17, 2014 16:49

Enigma89: Jan 2, 2007; by CVG

OwlBot 2000 posted:

A few things that may be getting missed:
1.) rent control isn't just about housing supply, but creating stable neighborhoods for people to live and grow in.

I never really liked this reason. Some people get lucky and are born in world capitols and they get to stay without having to pay the premium. Any one who makes the move from the interior to a world capitol then has to pay higher rent just because they are not from there.

# ? Oct 17, 2014 17:18

Lyesh: Apr 9, 2003

wateroverfire posted:

"Look, chronic hunger and poverty is easy. Just give people all the free food and money they need and tax the rich to pay for it! What's so hard about that?"

Is a sentiment people express on this forum a lot, as if issues are that simple and the only thing lacking is political will.

It is that simple though. It's not going to happen, but that doesn't make it complicated, just unlikely.

# ? Oct 17, 2014 18:43

Guy DeBorgore: Apr 6, 1994; Catnip is the opiate of the masses; Soiled Meat

Lyesh posted:

It is that simple though. It's not going to happen, but that doesn't make it complicated, just unlikely.

I know this is getting into derail territory but... what are you picturing here? Just take, say, all of the profits made by American companies ($1.8trillion in Q2 2014 according to Google) and distribute it to the bottom 50% of the world or something? Do you actually think something like that could work? Even if you assume there's no transaction costs and no corruption the result would be economically ruinous, and not just for Americans.

# ? Oct 17, 2014 19:31

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# ? Apr 25, 2024 21:45

Lyesh: Apr 9, 2003

Guy DeBorgore posted:

I know this is getting into derail territory but... what are you picturing here? Just take, say, all of the profits made by American companies ($1.8trillion in Q2 2014 according to Google) and distribute it to the bottom 50% of the world or something? Do you actually think something like that could work? Even if you assume there's no transaction costs and no corruption the result would be economically ruinous, and not just for Americans.

Eradicating World poverty is probably outside the US's power, but we could be trying literally thousands of times harder than we are to do so. Seven trillion dollars per year or whatever could pay for a whole lot of third-world infrastructure and feed a loving LOT of starving people.

Aside from that, there is absolutely no lack-of-money reason that the US has any homeless people. Let alone millions of them.

# ? Oct 17, 2014 19:52

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