Robinson: "It’s a gentrifying city..."
"""Gentrification""" being used unironically should be the only thing you need to know about how far Robinson's mental model of the housing market is from reality.
Preston: "…is that they’re market fundamentalists. And they believe that simply creating more housing for rich people will ultimately trickle down to people who aren’t rich—maybe in a decade, maybe 50 years."
YIMBYs are not libertarian market fundamentalists. We believe that the principal cause of the housing crisis is that there is a shortage of housing. Simply removing zoning restrictions would not fix the situation for poor people, but that's not what YIMBYs argue. They want a mix of zoning reform, expanded housing vouchers, and yes, public housing.
Let's suppose that we only expand housing vouchers. We have rules forbidding increasing the supply of housing, and a policy that subsidizes demand. What happens to price? It goes up. How many more people do we house? No one, because you can't subsidize your way out of a shortage, and you can't redistribute your way out of a shortage.
Let's suppose that we only build public housing. We still have rules forbidding increasing density. Unless "build public housing" means building public single family home lot sprawl, nothing will get built. _The same zoning restrictions that prevent new private housing also prevent new public housing._
Let's suppose that we only reform zoning. Now it's legal to build more housing, and people will spend money building taller buildings with far more units for more people to live in. Since apartment units are built for far less money per-unit than detached homes, this lowers the price floor that housing can be offered at, allowing housing to become cheaper if we build enough housing to put serious dents in the vacancy rate. We're still leaving out the poor, since housing does take time to filter.
Zoning is not the end-all be-all of policy tools for fixing the housing crisis. YIMBYs agree. But it is the first step, and the single biggest tool in our policy toolbox. Everything starts with supply, and the biggest constraint on supply is zoning. After that, you can clean up the remaining market failures (i.e. homelessness, rent-burdened low-income people) with housing vouchers and much smaller public housing projects than you would need without zoning reform.
Preston: "For all the talk in this city, even a city that’s more progressive on some issues, for all the talk when it comes down to who our economy caters to—not just in housing, but especially in housing—it caters to the wealthy."
Preston literally blocked a 400+ unit housing development _on a valet parking lot_. _He is_ the wealthy person being catered to by the establishment.
Preston: "I thought we could control the rents a bit and have some protections in place. Maybe this can work if we just make developers do a handful of affordable units when they build, and maybe we’ll get there somehow."
Developers don't build out of the kindness of their hearts, they do it for money. If they're forced to subsidize too many "affordable units" with market rate units, the development won't be profitable, so they don't build. If the rent they can collect is capped early, they don't build. Remember, in California, because of Proposition 13, there are enough property owners paying 40-year old property tax valuations that renting is frequently 5-8x cheaper than buying. Literally some properties that rent for $4k/month (@ $600/month property tax) sell at prices of $15k/month mortgage + $3.5k/month property tax. In order for new build rental housing to be competitive with old rental housing, you need to build a shit ton of it to get the per-unit costs down since you're already paying far higher property taxes than landlords who have owned the same property for 30-50 years. San Francisco simply is not zoned for the density of housing that would make a lot more construction financially feasible. Add on rent control and making 30-50% of units "affordable", and you make it even harder for new housing to be built.
Preston: "Well, I think the city and government has to be in the business of actually creating housing for people that is not for profit, right?"
Public housing is good. However, the city and government will be building housing at per-unit prices that would be financially infeasible for private developers and renting them below cost. Even at-cost, these units would be far more expensive than they need to be. You still haven't fixed the underlying cause that you've put so many artificial constraints in front of building housing that you've made it far more expensive than it needs to be. Making the government pay $900k to build a unit and renting it for $800/month and just throwing the entire state budget into doing this _could_ solve the problem, yes, but I think we're better off making new units cost less than $900k to build than we are throwing money that could be better spent on this.
Preston: "I think that’s certainly a factor here. We commissioned a report—and we’re expecting to announce it fairly soon—from the budget, legislative analysts looking at vacancies in San Francisco. And there are a ton of vacancies. A lot of newly constructed places like these luxury condos that sit particularly in the South of Market neighborhood in San Francisco just sit empty, and it’s exactly as you’re describing. You can see at night what’s lit up and what isn’t."
People don't have their lights on at night, therefore their units are empty/vacant? Does he leave all of his indoor lights on when he goes out at night? I certainly don't.
Preston's Board of Supervisors actually passed a vacancy tax on units. It excluded luxury properties (Single family homes) like his. Take that for what you will.
Robinson: "If you have an apartment building with 50 units occupied by working-class tenants, and it’s demolished, and they build something that has 100 units, but it’s 100 people from Palo Alto who come and move in, you have the aggregate number of total units increased—you say we’ve got more housing—but you’ve actually managed to displace more working-class people from the city in the process."
If they're rent-controlled, they can't force the tenants out. If it's not, those working-class tenants were forced out by rent increases or general cost of living costs long ago. More units are better, because the root of the housing crisis is the shortage.
Preston: "Right. It’s always the loopholes around rent control that are used to attack rent control. There’s just such a disconnect between working-class folks and the pundits on rent control, right? You go to all these economics departments, and you can find lots of professors who are going to tell you how rent controls are bad and distort the market. A few of them will give you some support. But generally, you go and talk to people who are living in rent-controlled apartments, or live in San Francisco, where there would be virtually no working-class left in San Francisco, were it not for rent control."
Rent control reduces supply and doesn't help newcomers. It is great for current tenants, though.
Imagine you're a woman who's in an abusive relationship, but you share a rent-controlled unit with your abuser. If leaving means your share of rent goes from $800/month to $2,500/month, how likely are you to leave your abusive husband/boyfriend?
Rent control does not help people who have only recently started renting. A rich software engineer who lives in a rent-controlled unit for 30 years is paying less than a student who just moved to the bay for school and has to fork over $2-3k/month for a room. Is that fair? Older, well-established dual income married couples in rent-controlled units who are in the later and highest-earning stage of their career pay far less than the 26 year old transplants who just want enough space for themselves and a kid. Is that fair?
We are all better off when the market rate is lower for everyone. Rent control reduces supply and forces landlords to raise rents in other units, forcing poorer, younger, possibly abused newcomers to subsidize the older, richer, and more well-established residents of an area. That is not a solution to the housing crisis. Just build more fucking units.
Preston: "Even the studies from the economics professors who attack rent control always have to acknowledge, in all those studies, how effective rent control is in stabilizing housing for seniors, disabled folks, and the most vulnerable folks, even as they attack it on theoretical grounds. They still acknowledge that it works to do what it’s supposed to do, which is to stabilize people in their homes."
Rent control is America First, but for local cities. This is the principal flaw of democracy; politicians have no incentive to represent people outside their district. This "America First"-style politicking, more specifically, is politicians putting their constituents' interests before the interests of non-constituents _to the detriment of everyone_. Rent control may be great for the few is benefits, but it makes the problem worse for everyone else.
Don't get me wrong; rent control is a great policy when enacted with some limitations. Rent should not be allowed to be hiked more than 10% per year; but it cannot be enacted without other measures to increase the supply of housing, else you create a two-tiered housing market: one for the rent-controlled, who are stuck in place but get fabulous rents, and one for newcomers who are stuck with the bill for all of your overly-generous rent control.