I think it's sort of obnoxious and should be illegal to force landlords to keep renters ad infinitum just because. That hardly seems fair to the landlord, no?
Kinda like the comment the other day on HN that was something along the lines of "I don't see why we need the gov't regulating water prices, why can't the free market just sort this out" ... "because water isn't like an iPhone, it's something that everyone needs and there's a huge butterfly effect to this, less crops, less food, etc. on a very large scale -- not to mention supply/demand doesn't work for something with fairly inelastic demand".
What's next, "I think it's sort of obnoxious and should be illegal to force insurance companies to not take into consideration pre-existing health conditions"? "I think it's sort of obnoxious and should be illegal to force politicians and political parties to reveal who gives them money"? "I think it's sort of obnoxious and should be illegal to force people who are working to pay for the retirement of older people via Social Security"? "I think it's sort of obnoxious and should be illegal to force companies to limit the amount they pollute"?
There are plenty of arguments against rent control. But I find it hard to accept "but this guy could be making more money if the government didn't get in the way!" as an argument against rent control (or most other things, for that matter).
How does this legitimize it? A group that votes to dictate what I can do with my property might be doing it by the letter of the law, but that doesn't make it morally right. If I've earned something (e.g., I've gotten it legitimately through trade, as opposed to theft or fraud), that means I've poured some part of my life into earning that thing. Apart from issues where criminality is involved (theft, fraud, etc.), no life should be subject to the arbitrary dictates of any group.
Each of us should be free to make the most of our lives, as best as each of us can. Some of us will achieve more, others less. And there's no getting around that, because no two people can ever be the same in every respect.
To be clear, I am pro-equality in one fundamental respect: we should strive to be equal before the law.
Land, of course, does not work like you imagine it does. See, e.g.,:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_tenure#Modes_of_ownership_...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adverse_possession
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_reform
In addition to all that, you ignore that concepts like "trade" and "law" and even "earned" are all intrinsically social concepts. No man is an island. That doesn't mean that property rights aren't useful and important, but if you want everybody to agree on a particular set of rights, you'll have to make a case that is more compelling than, "my particular moral code says you must abide by my particular moral code".
Thievery doesn't become acceptable because someone makes a compelling case or a pretty argument. Justice doesn't become "fundamentalism" because it won't compromise with injustice.
See, I can make sweeping, unsupported assertions, too!
Congratulations, you just justified slavery.
Your fixation on one thing and your refusal to compromise or even to admit the validity of other views is exactly what fundamentalists do.
It's not merely an arbitrary moral code that I'm asserting. What other way is there to live than to use your mind as best you can to make the most of your limited time? What other way is there to live than to treat others neither as masters nor slaves, but as trading partners (in love, friendship, mentorship, business)?
What other way is there to live than to treat others neither as masters nor slaves, but as trading partners (in love, friendship, mentorship, business)?
You're advocating the opposite of that. As a landlord -- assuming a world with absolute property rights -- you have a significant power advantage over your tenant. A 3x-4x rent increase is not treating your tenant as a "trading partner", it's using your status as landowner to your enrichment and their detriment.
Further up you suggest:
A group that votes to dictate what I can do with my property might be doing it by the letter of the law, but that doesn't make it morally right
Not inherently, no. That's only the case if you believe that the voting-majority group is immoral. That certainly can be the case, but I don't believe it's the case often enough to abandon the idea of democracy.
Personally, I'm definitely in favor of limiting property rights. Property is in general not a fungible "product", and its supply is limited. I consider land to be a public good. The state grants you some property rights, but reserves to place some restrictions on what you can do with the property in the name of the public good. I don't think we have the balance down perfectly yet, but I would absolutely not advocate giving property owners carte blanche to do whatever they want with that property.
It's a matter of drawing the line somewhere: I think you might agree that some restrictions are good. Disallowing renting decisions based on discrimination of protected classes is something we might agree is a good thing (sorry, I don't mean to state your position for you, but I don't know you, so I'm just stating a hope, a guess, as to somewhere we might find common ground). If we can take that as a given, then we can agree that the state restricting property owners to some extent does indeed make sense. And from there it's finding a list of things that it's ok to restrict, and it's not ok to restrict. From this discussion I'd guess that my list of things that it's ok to restrict is a bit longer than yours. And that's ok, but at least it's a starting point from which to find a compromise. The final list has more on it than you want, and less on it than I want.
Business deals and compromise are rarely about making one or the other party (or both) 100% happy. I believe there's "common wisdom" floating around that the best deal is one that both sides are slightly uncomfortable with, and I believe that to be pretty true.
If, on the other hand, you do truly believe in giving property owners absolute power and free reign to do whatever they want with it, then I don't know that we can actually have a productive discussion, because our viewpoints may just be too different. That's unfortunate, but that happens sometimes.
In a romantic relationship, either party can decide to leave without retribution.
In a friendship, either party can prioritize something else they value more, and the friendship wanes.
Students can outgrow mentors, and vice versa. Businesses can fire clients, and clients can go to other busiensses.
It can definitely be detrimental for someone's romantic partner or spouse to leave them (and the same can be said for any of the other relationships in this list). Some people are so distraught when someone leaves them that they attempt suicide.
However, does the fact that this happens in any way justify imposing restrictions on couples? Should a person be forced to endure a romantic relationship that they wish to end because it would be to the detriment of the other person? You can say the same thing about any of the relationships I've listed. For example, should you be forced to buy a brand of soap you don't like because the grocer isn't doing well, and he needs you to buy his unsold inventory?
All relationships are a two-way street, and for a fair trade, both parties have to agree, voluntarily.
For your first 3 examples (romantic, friendship, student/mentor), I of course say sure, either party is free to leave whenever they want.
The difference here is an economic one. It's near impossible to make sensible legislation around feelings (though some lawmakers certainly seem to try). While the ending of a romantic relationship may have a huge negative psychological impact on me, it doesn't affect my ability to live on in economic terms. A landlord kicking me out of my apartment can directly affect my livelihood, and the government is trying to protect me there. I think it's also uncommon for that to hurt the landlord (especially in the non-rent-controlled case), so there's an imbalance of pain. In the relationship case, leaving causes me pain, but staying causes the other person pain. Legislating whose pain is worse or less justifiable is, I hope we'd agree, a mess.
The firing topic is interesting, though, because even the law disagrees in different parts of the world. In Europe, for example, many countries have laws that are very employee-centric, and make it very difficult for firms to fire people. I personally don't agree with the extent that they've gone over there, but I can at least appreciate that people in other areas value employee security over employer mobility and lack of overhead. Even different states in the US have different laws that make it easier or harder to fire people, and define different obligations on the employer when they want to fire someone.
All relationships are a two-way street, and for a fair trade, both parties have to agree, voluntarily.
I'd like to agree to that in principle, but that just isn't true. There are plenty of laws on the books that can give one side more rights to make, not make, continue, or terminate an agreement. For example, a landlord may wish to discriminate against people with certain physical disabilities, because otherwise he'll have to spend money to install accessibility features in his building, but the law says... nope, can't do that.
A landlord may also wish to discriminate against an existing tenant who isn't able to fulfill the landlord's newest vision of his property's profit-making abilities, but there are a bunch of laws that also say... nope, can't do that. I happen to agree with a lot of them, or at least the intent behind them.
Our entire legal system is based on the idea that, on an individual level, both parties don't have to agree... only some representatives pulled from the majority do... sorta. There are lots of laws on the books that I never agreed to, and yet I'm bound to follow them just the same.
But all that is fine, I think. Many laws -- renting-related laws in particular -- are designed to weaken inherent power imbalances. The landlord naturally has more power in society than the single mother who is holding down two jobs. The law tries -- often imperfectly -- to protect the mom from people who would ignore her interests and take advantage of her.
- What about the designs my co-worker painstakingly worked on over the same period?
- What about the reams of reports my wife wrote at her company, which makes heart valves? She gets up at 4:30 in the morning, comes home at around 5 at night, works after dinner. When there's an important deadline coming up (which is almost all the time), she works weekends.
All of these things are property. Each of us poured ourselves into these things. We could have done other things, but we chose to do these things. In a way, we're not special - we're just three people, out of billions.
None of us are thieves. You can casually toss around your equivocations and guilt-tripping for being born, but that doesn't change the fact that many people are honest and have earned what they have.
Not that it means his stance was correct, but your argument isn't addressing his point.
At any rate, in all three of my examples, money changed hands for work creating property. That money could be used to buy property, physical or otherwise.
At least in my dialect of English "a property" would always always refer to land (e.g. "steal a property" is nonsense).
Give me strength.
Why do you have property? Why does a police force and firefighters exist to protect that property? Why are there courts and contracts? The only reason is because a group of people have decided to set rules that protect your property - the only "natural property" you can have is that which you can fight for, and anything you have beyond that is by the grace and favour of the same society you are so quick to deride.
> To be clear, I am pro-equality in a fundamental way: we should strive to be equal before the law.
And the poor and rich alike have equal right to sleep under the bridges.
It's not society that decided this. Most people in our society recognize the fact that the alternative would be to resolve disputes (including ones where no one intended to cause anyone any harm) through violence. We need courts, police and contracts so that we can live and create without fear of retaliation, without generations of Hatfields feuding with McCoys.
Because the landlord wants to protect their property and pays the property tax towards that goal unlike the renter? (yes it is built into the cost of rent but it's also built into the cost of every business transaction and people don't criticize that point)
lolwut?
The free market works pretty OK for gasoline and food (taken as a whole; obviously specific foods are elastic). When was the last time you heard people clamoring for price controls at the grocery store?
Even more to the point, the free market works just fine for housing in the vast majority of the US that does not have any form of rent control.
That so many units in SF are rent controlled is a huge part of the problem here. It reduces the incentives for landlords to maintain properties (the OP specifically cites these problems) and makes it difficult-to-impossible for people in rent-controlled units to move (again, cited by the OP). It also significantly reduces the supply of housing in SF, driving up market-rate rents. Eventually the market-rate rents are so much higher than the rent-controlled rents that landlords have a strong incentive to pull stunts like what's happening here.
The other big part of the problem is that so many people seem to think that the solution to all their economic problems is more regulation. What we're seeing in SF is not a failure of the free market, but rather the failure of an over- and ineptly-regulated market.
Government actively intervenes to influence the supply and price of gasoline, and actively intervenes in food, subsidizing both production and consumption.
So, if whatever is being done for gas and food works well, that's not an endorsement of the free market.
But I feel like people are focusing on the weaker argument, about gas and food, and ignoring the far stronger argument, that the vast majority of this country somehow gets by just fine without rent control.
This is, in fact, extremely common, historically and currently. Just within the US in the past several years, look at the demand for price caps on bottled water in the wake of natural disasters.
New construction does face many other issues, though. NIMBY's, parking regulations, zoning, etc.
I full-throatedly support new, dense residential construction sufficient to meet SF's current and future housing demands. This will continue to be my position for the forseeable future.
For those folks who are concerned about new construction destroying their rent-controlled units, Sangiacomo and his tenants worked out a really good plan: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9209304
There is a fairly well-accepted economic system that advocates both profit-seeking and making desired goods affordable. Far from being mutually exclusive, they can be mutually reinforcing.
Now, you can argue that particular rent control laws are too aggressive, or that the strategy for calculating bounds on rent increases cause excessive opportunity losses. But that's a far cry from the implication of your message.
2) You've missed my point about moving costs. Even when the market favors renters, the lease renewal negotiation favors landlords. This is because moving costs time and money payable to third parties. As a result, the landlord can charge higher rents for renewals than they can for new leases.
2 - moving isn't "that" expensive. It's a pain in the ass, but you can do it in a weekend with a few hundred dollar moving truck. You might be able to raise rates a few percent, but you can't just move them significantly above market.
Let me guess: no kids, haven't lived in your place very long, don't know your neighbors, don't have family nearby, don't live in a city with substantial pressure on housing, and you make over the median income.
> You might be able to raise rates a few percent, but you can't just move them significantly above market.
That you can't imagine something doesn't always mean it's not possible. It can mean the world is more complex than you expect.
I'm glad that you have such an easy and comfortable life that moving is no big deal, but that's just not true for everyone on the planet.
If your landlord raises their rates to double the market value, move. If you don't, that just means you're doing it wrong.
Yes, sure, if the rent is doubled, one should probably move despite the hassle. But the point is that landlords can take advantage of the asymmetry in cost/difficulty of changing places to hike rents. Nobody would move because the landlord was charging them $1/yr above what they could pay elsewhere. Most would move if it were double. The landlord's advantage is somewhere in between.
Care to show me a single company that would allow me to rent a truck for a cross country move for less than four hundred dollars?
Go ahead. Take your time.
You've described the typical SF tech worker and decided that everyone is like that. Might want to broaden your horizons a bit.
Regardless, you don't get the security deposit back until a few weeks after you've moved out. Never seen a truck rental or moving company who is all like "sure, you can pay us in a month". A bit of a chicken-and-egg problem, there.
The building I live in is also in the situation currently where a unit is being left vacant in anticipation of a condo conversion in a couple years.. San Francisco has a very complicated condo conversion law but part of it is that during conversion some existing tenants have to be offered lifetime leases which can never be increased. Leaving units vacant is a rational way of dealing with that.
Good for them. Better that they do this than take the rental income, and later whine about how terribly unfair renter protection laws are. :)
Based on my immensely scientific[0] survey of Internet Message Boards (and personal experience in the American Southeast), it seems that potential landlords sometimes forget that when they rent their property to others for use as the renters' home, the landlord loses almost all control over that property. This is right and just: everyone deserves a safe, secure, private place to live.
> Leaving units vacant is a rational way of dealing with SF's condo conversion laws.
Again, it's good for the landlords that they showed this much restraint.
The condo conversion laws prevent landlords from turning their apartment stock (that pays off smaller amounts over time) into condo stock (that pays off one large lump sum). These are sane and rational laws to have in cities that (for a variety of disgusting reasons) find themselves unable to create sufficient housing to meet demand.
[0] Ha!
The market rent is exactly what other potential tenants are willing to pay.
Now, you can argue that particular rent control laws are too aggressive, or that the strategy for calculating bounds on rent increases cause excessive opportunity losses.
Or that the inability to charge market prices causes property owners to refuse to rent in the first place, thereby making housing problems even worse.
You're not understanding the scam. Suppose you move in to a place and pay the then-market rent of $1000 a month. Let's further suppose that it cost you $2400 to move, plus a shitload of time and effort that you'd rather not repeat. If the next year the market price remains $1000/month, the landlord can still raise the rent on you because you'll be reluctant (and possibly unable) to pay moving costs again. The exact amount they can get away with depends on personal tolerance and your time value for money, but given how much moving sucks, in practice it's quite a bit.
> Or that the inability to charge market prices causes property owners to refuse to rent in the first place, thereby making housing problems even worse.
That is definitely a negative side effect, but not a huge one in practice. How many apartments can one person use? Who would really let an apartment building stand empty when you could be charging market rent? In San Francisco, pretty much nobody.
A bigger problem is that it might reduce the supply of new apartments. But that's also not a problem in SF because any building built after rent control was passed is not under rent control.
many cities do not have rent control. the city i live in is one such city. the scenario you're describing does not happen here.
if an owner decides to raise rent above market, now that owner is faced with the possibility of not being able to rent out that space, because now they are renting above market price. even just 1 month of vacancy is already lost revenue that would often dwarf the potential gain of raising the rent.
owners also have costs too. when someone moves out, they have to pay to have the apartment repainted, listed, and brokered.
this is not the reason rent control exists. rent control exists because SF wants to keep prices low without building more housing, making life miserable for everyone.
> A bigger problem is that it might reduce the supply of new apartments. But that's also not a problem in SF
because the city continually refuses to allow new housing developments to be built.
Because -as you mention at the end of the comment- your city builds new housing to meet demand. Rent Control was enacted BECAUSE landlords were raising rents to absurd levels in cities that (for a variety of disgusting reasons) found themselves incapable of building new housing to meet demand. :)
It is my experience, as you say, that rent tends to increase by a small amount each year, usually about 2%. Even people on fixed incomes tend to get cost of living adjustments, though, and the range is about the same as typical rent increases.
I do not see rents increasing by the amounts you suggest, which suggests that either all landlords since I started renting in 1991 have been leaving money on the table, or they can't actually do this reliably.
I think there are several reasons why they can't raise rents by 10% a year in order to keep people there, even though that extra money would be about what it costs to move:
Since the money it would cost to move grows only at inflation, by the second or third year it would suddenly be profitable to move, even for renters who really hated moving. In order to avoid this, landlords would have to apply the rise only once. But if they do this, then the market rate is just the higher one, and you could look at the initial lower rate as a promotion. In fact, this is quite common in rental advertising! Often it comes in the form of "first month free", which is about of the same scale.
More importantly, people who rent probably do not expect to stay in the same house or apartment for many years. In non-rent-controlled areas, rent is more expensive per month than buying the same sort of place, so if you intend to stay in the same location for more than a few years, there's no reason not to buy. As a renter, I've never lived in the same dwelling for more than three years, and when I move somewhere, I assume that I'll be moving again in a year or two, as conditions change (job, relationships, etc).
The dollar and timeline figures here tells me one of two things:
1) they wanted to get rid of me, particularly, or...
2) they took a calculated risk based on their experience managing a great number of units
I'd bet heavily on #2, since this is a pretty typical story in NYC.
They tried to raise the rent 22% to something 29% above market rate. They weren't able to get anything close to that rate for a new tenant. They will pull the same crap on this tenant next year too.
> More importantly, people who rent probably do not expect to stay in the same house or apartment for many years.
This is patently false.
Federal intervention has seriously distorted the home buying market with a variety of subsidies and tax writeoffs. Without this assistance, it would likely be substantially more expensive to buy than rent.
That's an insane assumption. Most landlords are companies which, if human, would be considered sociopaths.
The total loss of income is enough incentive for the landlord to keep rent increases reasonable. If your example held true, there would be violence in the streets across the globe but there aren't. The incentives keep increases in check in markets less insane than those in San Francisco and California at large. The policies of that city and state are the largest differentiator between them and areas with healthy markets/ Maybe we should be looking at policy beyond the veil of partisan rhetoric?
That is incorrect. That is the new price of that unit for that tenant, as if it were a market of size 1. A similar unit on the market would rent for a different rate paid by similar tenants in the market.
If I wanted to rent my apartment out I wouldn't go searching for laws--I'd go searching for tenants (and a basic lease agreement I could modify).
If there's a required course or something, I guess it would make sense then.
It doesn't take long to learn the basic laws about something that are most likely to affect you. And then consult a lawyer for anything you are not sure about.
Do you have insurance? Same principle.
I don't feel a lot of sympathy for the landlords in SF. If they want to own property that isn't rent controlled, there's a whole big country out there, the vast majority of which isn't rent controlled. They chose to buy under the restrictions that exist. That's their responsibility.
>If I wanted to rent my apartment out I wouldn't go searching for laws...
This is a dangerous level of ignorance.
When you rent a space that you own to another for residential use, you forfeit the vast majority of your privileges as a property owner. Pretty much every jurisdiction recognizes that a person requires a secure space to come home to in order to have a chance at a decent life.
If you're thinking about renting out your property, you're setting yourself up to be royally fucked if you don't familiarize yourself with the relevant laws.
I know people (in fact, every branch of my family, along with many of my friends) who have rented their entire lives, because they can't own - they've never been able to amass enough capital or convince someone else to lend them it. Should they be uprooted every year (or more often) because someone wants to make a bit more money?
Rentals are whatever the combination of the contract and the local law say they are, by definition.
No, they shouldn't be, but that's not really the issue. The issue is: should landlords be legally allowed to uproot them?
My answer is a decisive yes. For whatever the reason, they should be able to not renew a contract once it expires.
I don't see why laws should be in place to restrict how much someone makes. Nobody has to have that particular apartment, or live in that particular place, etc. There's always options.
Yes, it really is. Which does the most harm - uprooting people and families every year, forcing them to deal with the stress of moving and finding new life patterns which match wherever they live now, or disallowing landlords from making a bit more money?
EDIT: s/allowing/disallowing/
Again I think that's a red herring. There are plenty of reasons an owner might want to remove a tenant outside of profit. But again, it's not the issue--this is really straight to the heart of property rights.
Someone owns a property, and by and large, should be able to do what they want with that property.
Living on someone else's property is part of the risk of renting. Similar to working for someone else--would you also argue an employer should have to keep paying a worker who is underperforming (or any of a litany of legitimate reasons), because if they didn't that worker might have to deal with the stress of moving & finding new life patterns?
As I say in another comment, when you rent out a house to a tenant, you already lose certain property rights, at least while the tenant is living there. You can't write a contract which allows you to keep them, by law. You usually even have certain duties to the tenant, as much as landlords like to shirk these. This is the same in many developed countries, and the world's yet to fall apart for it.
And therein lies some of the disconnect: my answer is a decisive no. I think there are some reasons for which a landlord should be able to kick out a tenant, but I do not believe that any reason will suffice.
And that's why we have (imperfect) laws such as the Ellis Act, and a raft of other things that protect tenants from capricious, rent-seeking landlords.
If they are living on someone else's property, and that person wishes to sell the property, and the lease and any other contractual or statutory guarantees have lapsed, then yes? This is really not a new thing. You can't do away with property ownership as a concept just because San Francisco is ridiculous.
Actually, almost everywhere, when you have a tenant, you lose some ownership rights already, by law. For example, except in an emergency, you generally can't enter the building without prior notice.
Here's the thing, though. It's not as if existing rent control regulation catches landlords by surprise. If a prospective landlord is so unprepared as to be unaware of the rent control status of a property that he's planning on purchasing, then he's likely to do very poorly with pretty much all of the tasks that being a landlord requires of him.
In short, the fact that landlords rent out rent-controlled units is proof positive that they understand and accept the restraints imposed on them by rent control regulations. The fact that rent controlled apartments continue to be rented in SF (rather than withdrawn from the market for five years and converted into condos, as the law allows) is proof that rent control is not draining the lifeblood out of landlords.
The insane rents in SF are not due to rent control (how could they be?), but due to the pathological lack of new residential construction.
Whether you should do so is another question, one to which I don't have the answer.
Landlords have a variety of legal options to terminate a rent-controlled lease. Those options are almost always less palatable than continuing the lease. This is by design, and -in areas with obscene housing supply issues- good for society. Housing security is far more important for societal well-being than the fullness of a landlord's wallet.
Sure, landlords "have the right to change their mind", but only within the legal/regulatory framework in which they've chosen to invest.
But hey, "Uber, but for residential rentals". There's clearly _some_ people who'd benefit from doing end-runs around the rules by which everybody _else_ plays...
(Just think for a minute about how surge pricing for apartment rentals in SF would look... All the "locals" moving out to Oakland or Pleasanton while WWDC or Google IO is on, and moving back in again during Burningman...)
If you're going to trot out an absolutist term like "by definition", I'd like to inform you that "limited time" is by no means a condition for being defined as "rent": http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/rent
I know that sounds a bit pedantic and splitting hairs, but if you're going to base your argument on re-defining what words mean... that's a bit of a problem.
Check another dictionary and it's part of the definition: http://www.thefreedictionary.com/rent (verb, 2)
In common use, it's always in conjunction with a temporary agreement. You don't "rent (a home) forever." GP didn't make up some new usage to further his argument.
Even considering the temporary case, what does "temporary" mean? 1 year? 2? 5? 10? Where's the cut-off where you've rented for "too long" and it's ok to be kicked out of your home? Even if you can pick a number for that yourself, I hope you can agree that others might have different numbers, and that the selection of such a number is somewhat arbitrary.
I think the fact that all of this is a problem proves the point that people do expect to be able to rent a home for some value of "forever" (or even some value of "temporary") that is larger than a landlord's profit motive would allow.
Look, if I want to rent a power saw from a hardware store that offers rentals, me keeping that saw for a long time isn't a problem, assuming I'm continuing to make payments[1]. If the hardware store finds there are more people wanting saws, and they're running out, they'll just buy more; there's a ready supply. The same thing doesn't work for housing because land is a limited public resource. In SF's case it's even more limited due to the arbitrary new-construction planning process and disappointing level of NIMBYism in the city that means we can never keep up with demand, Mayor Lee's housing initiatives notwithstanding. This is why real property law doesn't give absolute power to the owner of that property. There are rules. You can't discriminate based on protected classes, for one. Rent control is another rule. The Ellis act is yet another. These rules aren't perfect, but they do tend to protect people who would otherwise be at the short end of a very unpleasant landlord-tenant power dynamic.
[1] It might be stupid for me to do so, financially, since I'd fairly quickly pay more than the cost of a new saw, but let's assume that, like housing in SF, the cost of a new saw is several hundred times the cost to rent it. This also serves to point out that owning a house is financially impossible for many people, while renting -- up until recently -- was much more doable.
The only value that should be expected is the duration of the lease. Yes, it's true that many landlords are satisfied with their rental arrangements and want to continue renting (I have personally done several lease renewals with the same landlord, and I have relatives that lived in the same rental for 20+ years), but a tenant should never take that renewal for granted. Leases are usually in 12 month increments, and at each renewal point, the relationship is re-evaluated by both parties and one or the other moves on or alters the terms of the rental contract if he/she is dissatisfied. Is it really that hard to figure out how this works?
I'm a tenant now and I will hold no ill will to the landlords if they do not wish to renew our lease. I do not feel entitled to their property beyond the contractual and legal stipulations outlined in our lease and in the state's landlord-tenant law, nor do I feel that it's my right to force them to rent to me in perpetuity.
I'm more surprised that some adults believe renting a home grants them a perpetual interest in it than anything. That's literally the difference between renting and owning. If you have a permanent interest in the land, you are at least part-owner. When people want to keep things forever, they buy them.
You could interpret that either way, I guess, as reinforcement of what you're saying, or as against. People should get the fact that it's always month-to-month after the initial period, and just deal with the uncertainty surrounding that.
But the expectation is that the initial lease functions more for the landlord than the tenant (protects the landlord from a flaky tenant who is going to move out after a few months, causing the landlord to have to bear the cost of re-cleaning and re-listing the property after a very short time). SF's laws are very tenant-friendly, so it's hard to get rid of a tenant even on a month-to-month agreement. That certainly breeds an environment that makes people think that "forever unless I want to leave" is normal.
I'm more surprised that some adults believe renting a home grants them a perpetual interest in it than anything. That's literally the difference between renting and owning. If you have a permanent interest in the land, you are at least part-owner. When people want to keep things forever, they buy them.
That reasoning holds tons of merit, I think. A problem, though, is that the cost to buy in SF is out of reach for most tenants. When a 20% down-payment pushes $150k for some of the "cheaper" houses, buying becomes difficult for the majority of people. It can even be a stretch for the high-flying, well-paid tech worker who has actually been able to put money away for several years.
You don't pay rent and then come into permanent possession.
There is a (temporary) time period attached to a rent payment.
I don't entirely disagree with you here--I just think you're being a pedant to attempt a "technically correct" play.
I truly believe that most people (at least who live in SF; I can't speak for other cities) would not consider a rental "temporary" to the degree that you seem to be thinking. Whether or not they should is another matter, but I think the state of rentals here -- especially among rent-controlled units -- serves only to reinforce the belief that a rental can (and "should") be as permanent as the renter wants it to be. And it's a feedback loop: people believe this because of renter protections, which causes them to believe and fight for (and often get) even stronger renter protections, which allows their rental status to become even more "permanent", and so on.
Again, not saying it's right (or wrong), but I can easily see how the sentiment in SF is that renting need not be a permanent thing.
Most jurisdictions recognize the need for a person to have a safe, personal, private space in order to have a happy and productive life. It is a recognition of this fact that causes most places to agree that a man's home is his castle, even if he is renting his home from another.
So the property taxes are probably trivial. The house acts as an investment with high returns and favorable tax status. They can sell it or take out a mortgage if they ever need money.
Given that burning down the property to avoid a long eviction struggle isn't unheard of, the owner is perfectly rational to decide not to rent it out.
People who are opposed to rent control argue, quite convincingly, that things like the situation you describe lead to bad outcomes for the community at large. A dwelling sitting unoccupied because an owner doesn't want to subject themselves to rent control laws decreases supply and increases rents for everyone.
2) No, that's not just pushing the problem back a bit. That is wrong. There will always be owners who want do do something with their property somewhere down the road. If you allow them to rent it out in the meantime (without getting locked into a forever contract) you can permanently increase the total rental stock in a community.
@harryh: your complaint is rent control prevents owners from renting out their property (while doing something in the meantime) without getting locking into a forever rental. For small landlords, it does not, at least not in this enumerated (most likely the most important) instance. As a small landlord, most importantly of a single unit, you may rent it out as you wish and move back in later, evicting a rent controlled tenant if necessary.
In the current instance it seems pretty likely that the owner has no intention of moving in but instead wants to sell an unoccupied house.
Yes, it's illegal, and the penalties are severe if the person is caught. But it's an option. And if the current owner is sitting there thinking, "Shit, I can't rent this building out and make it worth my while," (property tax, cost of keeping it up to code, etc) he'll sell it to a slumlord who can make a profit out of it.
That a thing is very popular does not make it lawful.
The law has always been distinct from morality, with clear gateways from moral sentiment to the law.
Has it? If you look at Hebrew and Christian tradition, the two are highly conflated.
If it's not illegal, you can still do it, morals be damned, without being punished.
It's pretty much the point of law--to give warning & right to punish. That's not the same as morals.
In that sense, I guess you're correct.
There's still lots of flaws in the theory, for instance morality has changed--slavery was not outlawed by holy laws, and seemingly was considered okay morally.
I don't personally equate legality with anything except written law enforced by people on earth, typically a government. Even in older times, "earth law" did not match "holy law." I don't think that, even at the time of its writing, the holy bible (for instance) described all immoral activity.
You still haven't described what moral is, or how one has an obligation to it.
Moral varies per person/family/culture.
There is no obligation to morality, it's typically enforced by one's own brain and pressure from one's peers.
I don't disagree with the dictionary definition: https://encrypted.google.com/search?hl=en&q=define+moral
I'm not sure if you're just being a pedant or something, but as a for instance, it's not illegal in my US state to drink alcohol to excess in the privacy of one's home, yet a great number of people find it immoral. This can be said for some act or another throughout history--frowned upon, not illegal.
Remember that property is also a limited resource, and all plots of property are not created equal. Property ownership is an agreement between individuals and the state. The state gives the individual some rights to the property, but is empowered to restrict use of that properly when it believes the public good is better served. In theory, both sides benefit from that. But, for now, landlords are trying to throw aside what many (myself included) would consider the public good, in the name of higher profits.
I'm personally not a big fan of rent control, but simply dropping it (and allowing landlords to drive trucks through loopholes such as this) alone is not a way to get ourselves out of our current housing mess.
Well, it doesn't have to be.
But prospective landlords tend not to build new units (or maintain old ones) when they don't feel they are getting a fair deal. It leads directly to the situation they have in San Francisco, where property owners only rent to family, coalesce many smaller units in to few larger ones and sometimes withdraw their units from the market entirely.
Landlords are investing capital and their own labor in their properties. If the expected return on that investment is less than what they could get from government bonds and a 9-5 job, don't plan on a big expansion in housing stock.
Definitely agree that the current situation is broken, but I was only suggesting that "it wouldn't be fair to landlords" is a bit too simple a consideration to make things right.
That said, I don't know enough about California law to say what 'point' might be.
Terms of mortgages in the past decade or so have been in tremendous flux, fraudulently granted (on the part of both lender and borrower, yes, in cases), and changed unilaterally. They've also been transferred with little or no documentation. Cases in which homes that were not even under any mortgage being seized are fairly easy to find.
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/robo-signing-of-mortgages-still-...
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/24/ohio-bank-foreclose...
http://abcnews.go.com/Business/bank-america-sued-foreclosing...
A few months before the year ends, we decide if we will renew the contract for another year. If not, I have a month or two to find a new place.
That is, property owners are free to do what they want with their property.
Another is: Your rights cannot exceed those of who you got them from (IE tenants cannot have greater rights to land than landlords)
Tenants are tenants for a reason.
The whole point of ownership is to have exactly the ability to have these rights.
Why should somebody who has no title to the land, be able to control what happens to the land?
The fact that someone lives somewhere doesn't give them magical rights to the place, and it shouldn't.
(Most landlord/tenant law exists to ensure everyone plays fair and doesn't flat out abuse each other, but doing something within your rights, tough shit)
When I rented in Boston from operating companies, they always increased rent the maximum allowed every opportunity allowed. This encouraged a lot of churn in the area I lived which I don't think was good for the area. I also had a lot of problems with them never fixing appliances so I moved out. When I started renting directly from personal owners and allowed to go month-to-month then we were both happy and the owners generally never increased rent unless when their costs also increased.
I had a bad experience myself renting in boston, that involved the health inspector fining the operating company about 20k.
This does not decrease the supply of housing, because it's a monopoly, they are doing it because they can, not because supply is low.
The counter argument is, that the governments of regions, (cities, counties, states, etc) have to account for externalities that businesses don't consider or care about.
Governments see benefits in keeping housing affordable. Do you like having restaurants with waiters, stores with clerks, streets that are swept, trash collected, and so on? then those people need places to live too.
Rent, maybe. Sell, no, since that would be a restraint on alienation :)
"Governments see benefits in keeping housing affordable. Do you like having restaurants with waiters, stores with clerks, streets that are swept, trash collected, and so on? then those people need places to live too."
Sorry, but I don't see how this problem doesn't solve itself without any intervention.
If none of these people can afford to live in your area, and they aren't getting paid enough to commute, they'll go elsewhere where they can.
In turn, your area will start to suck, so you'll either pay them enough to commute, etc.
Also that is the best case. Consider older people. I mean there is not really an economic incentive to help old people on fixed income afford homes. Maybe they should be turned out on the street to die, because if it was an issue, the market would have fixed it.
Blind market forces should eventually bring about a reverse, but you will get bubbles and depressions, and there are things which have social, ecological or other utility beyond dollars and cents which won't necessarily be accounted for.
Just because i've lived somewhere, means i get to live there as long as i want? So once someone's got theirs, nobody else gets a chance?
As I mentioned in another thread, i'm 100% not a fan of people having some magical right to continue to live somewhere just because they've lived in that place, or their parents have lived in that place, a while.
It's essentially "blood right", and I emphatically believe it's not a great way to decide who gets to live where.
Not that i'm a fan of just kicking people around continuously, mind you, but things that end up doing the above (like endless rent control), are not societal good to me.
Being part of a social fabric is a basic human need. In the past the strong would displace the week from their communities through violence. Now we do that through the law, which seems like a great improvement.
Nevertheless there is no getting around the harm that you do to someone when you displace them from their community and support networks. This is why the law is not as absolute as you and others with your viewpoint would like.
By all means let's consider by what means we can balance this against other important human needs, but I don't think it's reasonable to claim that the freedoms to deploy capital without restriction trumps the need of humans for stable community.
when you do that, i'd love to see your opinion then about living in a place where every month you need to set aside a weekend to find a plan-b place just in case your rent jump to a price you can't afford next month.
Do they not offer long term leases? It seems figuring out a more long term solution would be prudent.
rent is either 1 or 2yr contracts and then month-by-month. everywhere in the world. you can try to renegotiate a new 1yr or 2yr each time with a discount (or lower increase) but that is the same as negotiating all over again.
There's no story here.
The overall lack of self awareness is what is nauseating about HN.