Hacker News Reader

Comment by rguillebert | Hacker News Reader

> So maybe rent control's effect on supply is vastly overblown.

Just because rent control negatively affects supply doesn't mean bad supply is only caused by rent control.

I live in London too and I'm baffled by the lack of tall buildings in pretty central parts of the city. The real solution is more supply.

> Rent control is a band aid while that happens to keep long term (especially elderly/vulnerable) renters housed.

At the expense of people who don't currently live in London but could, such as immigrants or people from poorer parts of the country finding a good paying job here.

View on HN

>At the expense of people who don't currently live in London but could, such as immigrants or people from poorer parts of the country finding a good paying job here.

Kicking grandma out of her rented apartment and on to the street isn't going to suddenly mean that Romanian cleaners won't be living 7 to a house in zone 5.

This housing crisis was deliberately engineered in London as a result of the 1980s war between Thatcher and local government. Council housing was privatized as a result (& some of those gains were capitalized by existing residents through right-to-buy).

Councils were starved of tax funding through the UK's comically low council tax rates. This meant that not only was owning property a much better deal but also that councils lacked the funds to increase the supply of housing. Hence prices taking off like a rocket.

There's your supply issue. Rent control would be a drop in the bucket compared to that.

Not london, but i moved away from cambridge in the 2000s to switzerland of all places, which i thought was hugely expensive.

Well, in cambridge, i got kicked out of 2 flats in6 years because they wanted to raise rents, each time, i had to move further out, get a smaller place and still had to pay more money each time, i wasn’t getting pay rise in line with this and i think that’s still the reality across much of the uk, house prices and rents are rising higher than wages.

I also noted across this time that younger people apparently like staying in more and the selfish gits are spending less money on other things and somehow that’s their failing.

I didn’t have my rent raised in ten years here, in fact, as interest rates went down, i would have been well within my rights to demand a decrease. Also, bars, restaurant and clubs seem much more vibrant here than when i was in the uk, as if younger people had a bit more disposable income that flows in the local economy

I had the fun idea to tie minimum wage to real estate in the area. Take the national average rent for an apartment for a family of x people. If the regional average rent is 10% lower the minimum wage can be 10% lowered as well. If the average rent is 100% higher the minimum wage can be cranked up by 100%.

It would create problems for poor companies that will have to make room for more effective entrepreneurs. At the same time it would create new opportunities in areas normally not considered.

> Kicking grandma out of her rented apartment

If she's retired, she can move somewhere cheaper so someone who actually needs to live there for their job can move in.

The rest of what you've written is completely unsubstantiated.

Ah yes, the classic “you’re useless now grandma, the fuck on outta here” line. I bet you’re a real gem in the family.

A landlord is to housing what a scalper is to tickets (or for the nerds, graphics cards). Only one of them leaves you fucking homeless.

Ah yes, the classic "I got here first so it's mine forever".

Are you advocating for an end to all property rights or full housing nationalization or something? Do you advocate for 100% capital gains taxes, including on housing? I don't understand why you target rent control as the only thing that rewards the people who already have things.

I don't support policies that actively entrench the status quo. I'm for taxation that's as high as possible without causing too much negative impact on investments. We're having a conversation about rent control here though, that's why I only talk about rent control, in a conversation about taxation, I'll talk about taxation.

I'd rather a grandmother be housed than be homeless, even if it means her grandchild has to live in a further flat.

two ways of looking at things. on the one hand, there's the view that society exists to take care of people, including letting grandma stay in her appartment if she wants to. on the other hand is the view that society is a competiton, grandchild against grandparent, and so on. one of these views is insanity.

So should grandma occupy a five bedroom house by herself a 15 min walk from the city for twenty years while her children wait until their mid thirties for a deposit on a studio?

If you can afford to rent a flat in London, you can afford a flat anywhere, it's not about homelessness.

but what of you can only afford it because of rent control? isn't that the actual discussion at hand, elderly people staying where they've lived forever because they can afford to due to rent control?

There's a limited supply of housing in those high demand locations, not everyone who wants to live in London can live in London because there just isn't enough units, with that limited supply, housing should go to the people who need it the most, like the people who have jobs in those locations.

Then rent control will allow the _most_ people who have the _shittier jobs_ to live closer to work. I don't think there is a real care here about anything other than "I want the power to do what I want", which translates pretty closely to "mah freedoms".

Absolutely not, they protect current renters, not people with the lowest wages, people with the shittiest jobs have been priced out already. Rent control protects the millionaires renting in Mayfair as well.

> If she's retired, she can move somewhere cheaper so someone who actually needs to live there for their job can move in.

OTOH that is extremely cruel. Older people, assuming they have lived there most of their life, are the hardest hit by having to change. All their lifelong friends are near, their trusted doctors are nearby, it's all they know.

Why not have the job move to the person instead?

That's the dream isn't it? Take all the high paying silicon valley jobs, and move it to some cheap city like detroit.

That'd be great of course, for a ton of jobs, that's not possible though.

> I live in London too and I'm baffled by the lack of tall buildings in pretty central parts of the city. The real solution is more supply.

I just spent 5 days in London and was shocked at how many tall buildings there were that weren't there 20 years ago, and indeed how many are being constructed - not just in the centre and docklands, but in battersea and vauxhall too

In 20 years, you would hope plenty of buildings were built, if you go to places like Whitechapel though, it's all 3-5 floor buildings.

Supply isn't an issue, there are plenty of empty flats already - that's market failure.

Source on the "plenty" of empty flats in London? The number I found is 29,242 which is hardly something that'll get the prices down.

Indeed, and vacancy numbers are to be expected. Go to any source for rental investments and you'll typically see vacancy rate assumptions of 4% to 8%, because tenants leave and placing a new tenant can take some time. If you plot that on a city home to 10 million people, it's entirely natural to find that a few hundred thousand homes are vacant at any point in time, typically only a few weeks or months. The 'long-term vacant' problem is relatively minor by comparison, and while that must certainly be addressed, it's not at all going to change the order of magnitude of the current housing issue.

London's vacancy rate is actually very low, even during covid when vacancy rates tended to rise.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com