LA Has More Vacant Homes Than Homeless People | Hacker News Reader

LA Has More Vacant Homes Than Homeless People

laist.com

4 pointsjoshlittle4 comments

For the moment this report has been taken off the internet as they correct some of their vacancy figures:

> "It has come to our attention that there is more recent data to draw on the 10 luxury buildings we sampled in LA," Delgado wrote. "We will be coming out with an updated report, so we have taken down the last version of the report until that (sic) then."

"Tenants' rights laws" that make it difficult for landlords to evict non-paying or destructive tenants are one cause of vacant homes, as are rent control laws that prevent landlords from raising rents to market levels.

Single-family homes aren't subject to rent control in Los Angeles.

  YOUR RENTAL UNIT IS NOT SUBJECT TO THE RSO IF:

  You live in a single-family home (that is the only
  residential structure on the parcel)

Source: https://hcidla.lacity.org/what-is-Covered-under-the-RSO

But, yeah, rental regulations are much greater burdens on small properties, especially a psychological burden. Odds of getting a problem tenant are tiny, but if you're only renting one unit than the risk is immense. The larger the property, the greater the turn over, the less you care about losing money on the rare nightmare tenant.

A family member lucked into a small efficiency in a 15-unit building in the Cow Hollow/Marina district of SF in 2011. (It's one of the nicest and richest areas of the city.) She currently pays less than half what new units lease for. Yet after 8 years she's one of only three tenants remaining from 2011. The rest voluntarily left or, in one case, died.

Stronger rent control should go hand-in-hand with policies that promote density.

Interestingly, if you rent your property through Federal Section 8 programs, you're immunized from many state and local rent control laws.

And what if I said that Rolex has more chronometers in stock than there are homeless people in LA. Would that be any more of a moot point?

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