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Comment by ashray | Hacker News Reader

Is there no rent control in SF or other US cities? How do people get priced out?

There is rent control in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Washington D.C., and Oakland, CA. People get priced out of the market through an increase in demand and a lack of corresponding supply opportunities.

1. The lessee stays in a rent controlled location during a period of price increases, absolving themselves of the real-world price increase that is occurring to the landlord. So, to move from the house would mean the costs the landlord absorbed will be now absorbed by the lessee, meaning there is a large expense in moving. So, you either make the lodging you are in work, or else you move out. If you move out, lacking a corresponding wage increase, you will be priced out.

2. For San Francisco, there are height and zoning restrictions galore in the city. Supply to meet the demand is just not going to be allowed by the locals who push for "Keeping San Francisco like San Francisco." Since, demand increases, supply is static and those who would like to come in at $X wage are simply priced out of the market.

DC technically has rent control, but there are a variety of loopholes and it does not apply in most cases.

What are the loopholes? Is it like Section 8?

They fell in the statement because it was listed on the Wikipedia article. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent_control_in_the_United_Sta...

Thank you for the heads up.

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http://dhcd.dc.gov/service/rent-control

The most common exemptions from rent control are for rental units that are:

- Federally or District-subsidized

- Built after 1975

- Owned by a natural person (i.e., not a corporation) who owns no more than four rental units in the District

- Vacant when the Act took effect

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To be clear, DC has an extremely tenant friendly set of laws. But the rent control is basically just a legacy of an earlier era.

San Francisco has very strong rent control laws that limit rent increases to below the rate of inflation, that ensure well-behaved tenants generally can hold onto an apartment for their entire life if they want, and keep paying an ever-discounted rate, and they even apply when the tenant is wealthy.

But when poor tenants voluntarily move out, they're usually replaced by someone willing to pay a lot more.

Also, in any given year, a very small fraction of landlords (less than 1/10th of one percent) decide they don't want to be landlords anymore, and an extremely controversial California law called the Ellis Act allows them to decline to renew the lease and stop being landlords.

Why the opposition to the Ellis Act? If I own a home and want to sell it, I shouldn't be limited to selling it to someone who wants to be a landlord (a very small minority of people). And if I buy a home, I shouldn't be forced to rent it to someone.

If you rent a home you do not own it and you should not have any claim to what happens to it beyond the end of your current lease.

By the Copenhagen Theory of Ethics (https://blog.jaibot.com/the-copenhagen-interpretation-of-eth...), once you rent an apartment to someone for a particular price, you have a moral obligation to continue doing that forever.

This was tried during the 1600's and 1700's, there were 99 year leases on land between the gentry and the yeomen. When costs increased, the gentry were unable to adjust the price on their leases and paved the way for social upheavals.

99 year (or longer) leases are still very common in the UK for apartments ["leasehold property"]. There are issues with leasehold, but "I can only sell my landlord's interest to somebody else willing to be a landlord" isn't really one of them -- it's just an asset with an income stream and a certain amount of upkeep costs and responsibilities, and there are buyers out there who'll take them on and a generally accepted mechanism for valuing them.

And the pool of buyers who wants to deal with that is demonstrably much smaller than the pool of buyers who simply want to live in the damn house. If someone wants to sell their personal property I see no legitimate reason why there should be restrictions on who can buy it.

I don't see the word "rent" anywhere in your linked article but maybe a synonym is there somewhere.

Regardless, if you agree to rent $PROPERTY to $TENANT and I you want to sell me $PROPERTY, I don't see why I should be bound at all to any agreement with $TENANT outside of letting their current lease expire.

I don't buy that there is any moral obligation in the first place but to extend that to third parties seems a bit silly.

I don't buy it either, but the majority of SF voters do.

That sounds like a great way to ensure no one ever rents an apartment to anyone.

Know thy audience.

Those who own and rent to others are not looked upon favorably by those who rent. It's the Scrooge principle: A man who provides a service to those who would otherwise have no service are despised by all.

The sad thing about the opposition to the Ellis Act is how much it hinders the renting populace. By not allowing the landlord to pass along costs to the user, the user ends up losing more because the landlord is less likely to sink more monies into a facility.

Edit: If you are going to downvote me, please take the time to provide a reasoned response, I am open to hearing opposing points of view.

Yes SF and NYC have rent control. And other regulations that make it less profitable to build and rent out homes. This reduces supply of rental homes, which increases prices.

"In many cases rent control appears to be the most efficient technique presently known to destroy a city - except for bombing." - Assar Lindbeck

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