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Comment by Manuel_D | Hacker News Reader

Seattle (which is for forbidden by the state from implementing rent control) added 2-3x the housing units as San Francisco from 2010-2020 despite similar population growth in both cities. The impact of price controls on supply is a well studied phenomenon. Lower price for something -> less incentive to produce it.

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If you look at the data above it shows home building peaking in the early 1960s in NYC. Rent control laws were strong until the 1970s. That's the point when homebuilding plunged and didn't perk up for decades.

Weakening them in 1974 if anything seemed to restrict supply.

SF has comically low density housing that is driven by homeowners lobbying to restrict development.

The difference between SF and Seattle is probably property taxes (higher in Seattle). It discourages land from being hoarded and used unproductively.

You're blaming rent control for SF not building housing even though SF rent control doesn't apply to new buildings built (and hasn't for 40 years)?

70% of housing units in SF are still rent controlled. The negative influence of price controls are still felt. Not to mention, repeated attempts to repeal Costa-Hawkins means the threat of rent control is still hanging over developers heads.

Because of the laws around new buildings, rent control advocates have an incentive to prevent old buildings from being redeveloped: if they are redeveloped then there will be fewer rent controlled units! This does regularly play out in the politics of development in the area[0].

Then when rent controlled unit can be redeveloped, there's a desire to allocate various percentages to different income levels. This means that some units have less income for the same cost so it's hard to balance meaning fewer projects get off the ground.

Now there's even further issues about development as a right vs requiring a use permit...

So, there's a lot of contributors, but the political impact of the politics of rent control is significant.

[0] https://www.berkeleyside.org/2021/07/28/uc-berkeley-settleme...

It’s doesn’t take a genius to see see that being a landlord in SF is an ugly prospect.

Units built after 1980 in SF units aren't subject to rent control. On a purely econ 101 level "old units are unprofitable/new units are profitable" should spur more new construction to minimize the effects of old units on your portfolio.

I agree with this, but the misunderstanding because no one is explicitly talking about how there is a desire to preserve rent controlled units. This means it's very hard for the econ 101 to play out.

> Seattle (which is for forbidden by the state from implementing rent control) added 2-3x the housing units as San Francisco from 2010-2020

and yet to keep up with demand we would've needed to more than 3x what we did, though from what I understand, the infrastructure to build more high density housing even faster just doesn't exist. Seattle was literally building housing as fast as it is possible for a US city to build housing.

If true that, in my opinion, points to a more significant problem in America.

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