Hacker News Reader

Comment by pmoriarty | Hacker News Reader

If you can't afford to live in a non-rent controlled apartment in a given area, that's not going to change if your own apartment becomes non-rent controlled. You'll just be forced to move out of the area to somewhere more affordable.

I really don't see how making more apartments expensive to live in helps anyone but landlords.

View on HN

The argument is that rent control is a poor bandaid over the long-term problem of housing supply, because it reduces political pressure to build more houses. It's not the same longterm fix that changing zoning laws would be, for example.

It makes it more expensive via three avenues.

1. It incentivizes owners to convert rental stock to housing stock.

2. It disincentivizes developers from building new rental stock.

3. It concentrates demand and removes supply driving up the price of non-rent controlled apartments.*

* Every rent controlled place that is lived in my a person who can't afford market rent displaces an individual who can afford market rent who then competes for the remaining rental stock driving up the prices of the non-rent controlled apartments.

Where does the displaced person who can't afford market rate go? They could afford it at one point, just their wage increases were dwarfed by housing price increases. All it asks is that landlords have a %cap on how much they can increase their rents each year. It's just not sustainable to displace all your tenants every pop of the housing market. It's not like the landlords property tax gets affected when market value goes up, landlords are encouraged to hold and not build on their properties right now because property tax burden is assessed when you sell or build, doesn't matter what realtors can get for your property or how much you ask from your tenants every month.

> Where does the displaced person who can't afford market rate go?

It's been interesting seeing how the "if you can't afford to live there, you don't deserve to" attitude can be played both ways.

But my empathy will fall on the elder living on SS.

There are many downsides to rent control, but #2 is usually not one of them. A sensible rent control policy limits rent control to housing built before year X. This is the case for all cities in California that have rent control. For example in San Francisco the apartment needs to be built before 1979 to be under rent control.

This is a good thing for creating new housing. New apartments will not be under rent control and can command higher rent, so developers are incentivized to build new apartments.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com