Hacker News Reader

Comment by zip1234 | Hacker News Reader

Yes, I'm inclined to believe that rent control is a symptom, not the cause. The cause appears to be ridiculous zoning and building restrictions. If more housing is available such that the price drops, then rent control isn't even needed.

View on HN

100% agreed. There is no "by right" construction in San Francisco. If you want to build a building that fully within the intended zoning and use of the space as currently determined by the city, it is still subject to conditional approval and even environmental review. If someone in the neighborhood objects (100% odds of that happening), then they can tie you up for years, extracting concessions (often making the buildings smaller, and unfortunately often making them uglier).

I'm particularly excited about some of the new legislation that's just been passed that allows for by right construction if a city isn't meeting its housing needs, because it just may streamline the process of getting things built here.

I have rent control in Los Angeles but they're demolishing my place to make way for luxury condos, most likely for absentee owners. You can't find an apartment for under 2,000 a month in LA anymore but the way in which they demolish perhaps run down yet affordable apartments to make way for high end condos is a huge factor in the utter lack of affordable housing here. Not like people get rich in LA there is not even the income potential you have in SF and no stock options outside of Snap. I was born here so I have been treading water for life here but its getting harder and harder for people on salary to even afford to live here at all.

It also appears to reduce the amount of available rentals.

http://conference.nber.org/confer/2017/PEf17/Diamond_McQuade...

Ask a renter why rents are so high and they'll say a lack of rent control, because it brings their rent down.

Ask a property developer why rents are so high and they'll complain that ridiculous zoning and building restrictions are preventing them from building enough new supply (...and coincidentally reducing the amount of profit they will be making).

Ask a landlord why rents are so high and they'll complain that rent control is keeping the market from building enough housing (...and coincidentally reducing the amount of profit they will be making).

If you ask me, it's untaxed land - the costs of holding on to those tiny one story + garage houses were made artificially low - among other things, by prop 13. They impose a cost on others for monopolizing that land, but they aren't paying that cost, so the market signals that would fix the problem (getting them to sell up to somebody who would build denser housing to avoid a large tax bill) are severely restrained.

Prop 13 also means my parents can afford to retire, as outside forces have come and multipled property values many times, and the city has very high property taxes. Otherwise to pay 1+% on some of the worlds most expensive real estate without active income is insane.

I liked Cambridge, MA’s model... the first 250k of your property value is removed from property taxes. Doesn’t make a dent in big expensive houses, but makes property ownership more affordable on the lower end.

Keep in mind that property taxes are only soft linked to property value. If everyone's property doubles in value, and the city needs X revenue to run, it is still divided by the relative value of everyone's property. The only time increased property value causes taxes to go up is if there is a lot of other property that doesn't go up in value (or taxable value), which is what you have with Prop 13. Also, if one area becomes more affluent than another one (increasing its value), then they will pay more taxes.

>Prop 13 also means my parents can afford to retire, as outside forces have come and multipled property values many times

I'm all for older people being given hand outs so that they can afford a comfortable retirement.

In general I'd prefer hand outs to be allocated via need rather than a real estate driven lottery, but I can understand how winners of that real estate lottery could feel like it was a fair and just system.

If they aren't allowed to build denser, then taxing the underutilized land more won't result in more housing.

In SF, the resistance to denser housing comes from the same people who are not paying enough tax for the land they are occupying. Ramp up the taxes and the incentive they have to fight the denser housing will dissolve. They'll just move somewhere cheaper (or into denser housing).

> In SF, the resistance to denser housing comes from the same people who are not paying enough tax for the land they are occupying.

You should be careful with "the same people" arguments. They're almost always fallacious.

> Ramp up the taxes and the incentive they have to fight the denser housing will dissolve.

Ramp up the taxes and the incentive they have to fight the taxes will increase proportionally. Why wouldn't they capture that just like they captured zoning?

The real problem behind zoning is jurisdictional. As long as it is done on a city-by-city level, cities only have to be held accountable to the residents, not the people that they displace across their arbitrary borders. A regional jurisdiction would force zoning decisions to take into account everyone in the region, containing all the suburban residents with terrible commutes that are made worse by NIMBY protections.

>Ramp up the taxes and the incentive they have to fight the taxes will increase proportionally.

Of course. The rich will fight tooth and nail to keep their entitlements. Always have done, always will.

>Why wouldn't they capture that just like they captured zoning?

They would. However, zoning is an easier process to derail because it's more localized and easier to come up with plausible sounding bullshit reasons why something shouldn't happen. In politics you shouldn't attack the shield, you should go for the jugular.

Also you could "fix zoning" and it would still be palliative at best if valuable land is ultimately still being hoarded.

Property developer profits would be higher though.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com