Why are all landlords assholes again? Why is making a profit evil? Do you sell your services for half of what they are worth just to be nice?
So.. it doesn't make landlords assholes or evil, but its not like there wasnt a class issue. The only reason why this thread explodes is because the wealth difference is getting bigger and bigger.
So every lease becomes a lifetime deal. Hmm. Since rent keeps going up, this means prices are going to have to go up dramatically now so that I'm not completely hosed in ten to twenty years. After all, rent control increase caps are pretty much always below property tax increase caps.
Long-term, me-the-landlord is going to be put in a situation where rent doesn't even cover taxes. Nevermind repairs, maintenance, and insurance.
> You think it's ok to do something that will benefit your bank account but will simultaneously force someone to move out of their home?
Huh. I guess evictions for non-payment are out now. After all, it's their home, and it would be evil for me to evict someone from their home just for the sake of my bank account...
Between this and your previous point, you've made an excellent case that a moral and ethical person who owns property in SF would refuse to rent it under any circumstances. Well done.
> Enriching yourself at the expense of others is an asshole move, to me at least.
Are you aware that you just defined turning a profit as an asshole move? Perhaps you want to rethink your definition.
Nowhere did I say that, and I'll thank you to not put words in my mouth.
Actually, interestingly, you've now also defined profit as a zero-sum game across society. For some to be enriched, others must falter and be brought lower. If that's what profit is, then yes, I do believe profit is an asshole move. (But I don't think that's what profit is!)
It's entirely possible for landlords to raise rents in such a way that continues to cover their costs, continues to provide a tidy profit margin, but does not displace tenants. That's why I said it's possible to maintain your current profit (which you could consider a fixed dollar amount or a percentage, and my argument still holds) and did NOT say maintain your current rent.
OK. What nuance of your stated position did I mistake? In what way do you make a profit and enrich yourself without it coming at the expense of another? Bear in mind that trading something of yours for money from someone else is very literally a trade taking place at their expense - they are spending money.
> It's entirely possible for landlords to raise rents in such a way that continues to cover their costs, continues to provide a tidy profit margin, but does not displace tenants.
Not when prop 13 caps are generally higher than rent control caps. Over time, a property-owner will lose ground and their margin will shrink as their costs increase faster than their incomes.
In practice, this manifests as landlords deciding not to invest in the upkeep and maintenance so they can preserve their profit margins.
I don't believe we're talking about rent control here, or at least not exclusively. The original article is about someone's rent increasing by over 400%. I can't imagine how that could be justified by cost increases on the landlord's side.
I'm not arguing that the current system of rent control and property tax increase limits is working properly and is the best way to do things.
At any rate, you're re-framing the argument here to try to make me look bad. Your original question asked about landlords making 10x of their existing profit. If the landlord is already making a profit (which was the premise of your question), clearly they're not having issues making money in a rent-control+prop 13 environment. There are many multipliers between 0x and 10x, and I would argue that the responsible multiplier in order to maintain non-asshole status is well below 10... and even well below 1... but certainly greater than 0.
Just to be clear, though, to reiterate my initial point and make my position clear: if you're making a $500 profit off a $2000 monthly rental, and decide that you can and should make $5000 (a 10x increase in profit) by raising the rent to $7000, if that's at the expense of the renter's ability to pay... yes, it is my opinion that you're an asshole. That is the original question you asked, and that's the question I answered.
Yes, because the unit is no longer controlled and the landlord wants them out. In your eyes, that makes the landlord an asshole. That may be, but the reality on the ground is that there are few ways to do that... and they found one.
Does it even matter why? What if the landlord wants somewhere for their aging grandmother to live so they can care for her? Would that still make them an asshole? I suspect you'll say yes, because they're looking to push someone out of their home. Maybe the tenant has caused so many headaches that it's not worth putting up with them for the profit anymore. Who knows?
It wouldn't be an issue at all - magical words and warm fuzzies and similar crap aside - if all the various policies supported by not-assholes hadn't created a situation that encourages assholes. It's kind of like well-intentioned policies need to be carefully thought through because they can have consequences other than those intended.
> At any rate, you're re-framing the argument here to try to make me look bad.
Really? I thought I was just exploring the consequences of your position(s), but I'll bow to you on this one.
> There are many multipliers between 0x and 10x, and I would argue that the responsible multiplier in order to maintain non-asshole status is well below 10... and even well below 1... but certainly greater than 0.
OK. Then what is it? What's your happy medium, where you are getting money from someone, providing something in exchange, and making a profit without enriching yourself at their expense?
Tough. If your tenant isn't doing anything that you can evict them for, that's too bad for you as the landlord. When a landlord rents out his property as a home for another, that property becomes the lessee's castle. In all but a very few aspects, that property is now effectively the lessee's to use in any and all ways that comport with their leasing agreement.
> What if the landlord wants somewhere for their aging grandmother to live so they can care for her?
In California, there is a legal way to do this. It's one of the ways that the Ellis Act permits landlords to evict rent-controlled tenants.
The Ellis Act is a pretty fair and just law. It recognizes that landlords are human, and might have real reasons to get out of the property rental market. (Or that they might need to use their only rental unit to house themselves and their family.) It also recognizes that some all-too-human landlords do try to maximize their profit margins despite the very real damage that they would do to the lives of others.
And pretty much everywhere, you also have the option of increasing their rent to get them to want to move out. Like has happened here.
> The Ellis Act is a pretty fair and just law.
Really? Because if I walk outside and ask around, I'm pretty sure I'm going to be told that it's inherently evil and abusive and needs to be repealed, because a lease should be a lifetime contract for a locked-in low rate.
Of course it does! A big part of whether or not someone is an asshole is about intent.
What if the landlord wants somewhere for their aging grandmother to live so they can care for her? Would that still make them an asshole? I suspect you'll say yes, because they're looking to push someone out of their home.
The Ellis Act provides for landlords who want to take a property off the rental market, so this sort of thing actually is explicitly allowed by law. I think this is a tough thing, because yes, you are pushing someone out of a home, but I think it's a good balance of property ownership rights vs. the public good, as you're saying you want to do something completely different with the property, rather than just finding a way to do the exact same thing but line your pockets more.
Maybe the tenant has caused so many headaches that it's not worth putting up with them for the profit anymore.
The problem with this sort of reasoning is that it's subjective. A landlord could decide that a tenant is a "headache" because the plumbing in the building is terrible and the toilet keeps flooding the bathroom for no reason, and the tenant has decided to withhold a portion of rent until it's fixed. Should the landlord be allowed to evict the tenant because of that? I'd say no. But if the "headache" is that the tenant is constantly violating quiet-time rules and waking people up, then maybe repeated behavior of that sort should be grounds for eviction.
For this sort of thing I'd want the law to stay out of it. A signed lease is a contract between landlord and tenant; enumerate the "headaches" that will lead to eviction. Of course there's room for interpretation, but let the lawyers and courts deal with that.
OK. Then what is it? What's your happy medium, where you are getting money from someone, providing something in exchange, and making a profit without enriching yourself at their expense?
I don't think the exact number is all that important, but there's likely a range of acceptable values for different landlords, properties, and tenants. My position is that a 10x or even 1x increase is crazy and throws the public interest out the window.
When it comes to housing, people tend to buy/rent as much as they think they can afford (and sometimes more). You can argue that this is foolish (and I'd agree!), but that's the reality of the situation. Even doubling someone's rent would likely be catastrophic for their finances. The idea that landowners should be allowed to extract every bit of profit possible out of land -- a public, limited good -- no matter what the consequences, is absolutely reprehensible to me.
And this idea has led to strict rent control, which in turn has led to NIMBYism, which together have led to the clusterfuck that is San Francisco's housing market. Privileged groups act first and foremost to preserve their privilege, and rent control works by creating a privileged group. Hilarity ensues.
You said you wanted to gain in understanding. I think you should internalize that before going on. It's critical to the whole issue.
In short, you need to consider that attempting to put your ideals into policy may have resulted in creating the problems you fear.
That's an excellent point and is something I'll try to reflect on.
Do we just not care about that person?
But I'd rather be able to care about both people. I'd rather SF's planning process wasn't so idiotic that it's impossible to build at the rate we need to in order to house everyone who wants to live here, at whatever economic level. I'd rather that rent control hadn't helped to foster a culture of NIMBYism that causes all new projects to get shot down, drastically scaled down, or at best delayed several years.
The main priority in getting ourselves out of this housing crisis should be to build like crazy, and accept that neighborhoods will change, and the city will change. Once we've done that, and demand has stabilized, we can do things like eliminate or drastically scale back rent control, or at least make it more sane. But for now I believe it's necessary to avoid screwing people over.
What's been noted repeatedly across history is that rent control tends strongly to encourage a culture of NIMBYIsm. Rent control has contributed heavily to creating the current situation and its persistence increases the political resistance to building more housing.
Have you not noticed the routine grumbling about extending rent control to new housing and different kinds of housing? That scares the crap out of would-be builders and investers. Couple that with moralizing about how profit margins need to be razor-thin to be morally acceptable, and the scenarios you imagine are ones in which no developer is willing to work.
The result is pretty much what we have now - not enough building. If rent control were relaxed now, or even made hugely more difficult to extend, those fears would be reduced.
But right now? Rent control has created a witch's brew for political stasis. That's what you wanted, right? To enable privilege for people who are deserving by virtue of living in sufficiently old housing?
Not at all. But that's what we have now. It's easy to say "we shouldn't have done it this way", but simply removing tenant protections isn't going to solve the problem: it's just going to put all the power in the hands of landlords and builders... and of course they're going to abuse that power.
Existing rent control[1] isn't causing a lack of building. A city-enforced lack of building is causing a lack of building. Both the city planning committee and the NIMBY crowd just don't want things to change. On that, I completely agree with you.
Couple that with moralizing about how profit margins need to be razor-thin to be morally acceptable, and the scenarios you imagine are ones in which no developer is willing to work.
It's give and take. I'm not advocating for razor-thin profit margins, and I'm getting a little weary of you suggesting that my position is that the only alternative to the crazy rent increases are no rent increases at all. There has to be a happy medium somewhere, where landlords can increase their profit without driving people out.
[1] For the record, I am not in favor of expanding rent control, but I do believe we're at least temporarily stuck with the rent control we have now. Killing the existing rent control without first drastically increasing the housing supply (coupled with finding a way to allow landlords to raise rents without requiring that their tenants move away) would absolutely destroy lower-income renters.
Also, you should probably address harryh's excellent question about everyone else. Preferably with something other than an assertion of privilege.
As a landlord, deciding to raise rent on your units a modest amount, instead of a financially crippling amount, does not put you in a position to be "pushed out" than landlords who choose to be greedy.
Your costs have not increased such that you need to charge your tenant more than what they can afford. With prop 13, property tax increases are capped, the cost of public utilities that a landlord often takes on (like trash and water) don't increase that much year-over-year, and neither does the cost of contractors to maintain the property. Any increases are in-line with non-housing-related cost of living increases.
So what I don't understand about your statement is that you seem to assert that other landlords behaving like assholes somehow causes non-asshole landlords to be unable to maintain their properties and thus have to make the uncomfortable choice between either becoming assholes, or selling their properties to assholes and leaving. That doesn't seem to make sense unless somehow the cost of maintaining properties has started rising by more than single-digit percentage points per year, which doesn't make sense.
Let's assume that property maintenance somehow increases in cost by 5% per year (which I think is at the high end). The apartment in question here would be covered by a $73/mo rent increase. While that's not nothing to most renters, I think it could be considered a reasonable increase, and something that probably wouldn't break the bank. But the apartment in question isn't getting its rent raised by 5%, or even 10%. It's getting raised by 315%. There's no possible way anyone could ever believe that it costs anywhere remotely close to 315% more to maintain that property this year than it did last year.
Remember, we're not talking about profit here. We're just talking about the idea that you're pushing, that only charging a rent increase of 5% will put a landlord out of business, and that somehow the only way to stay in business is to "do what everyone else is doing" and raise rents by much higher numbers. If that's somehow true, I would love to see numbers that suggest that, because it sounds like an outrageous claim to me.
Also, you should probably address harryh's excellent question about everyone else. Preferably with something other than an assertion of privilege.
I find it interesting that you bring up the concept of privilege, as I believe landowners to be a particularly high-privilege group, especially when compared to many of the people who have been losing their homes over the past couple years.
Regardless, I agree that it's an excellent question, and I've already replied. If you feel my response is lacking, please reply to it and I'll try to clarify my position better. I'm really just trying to understand and provide my perspective, and possibly learn a bit in the process.
This specific case the tenant raised prices to boot an renter under rent control so its really just a perversion of the rent control law (and another great example of how it doesnt work). When the answer to regulation is more regulation you start seeing an infinite loop. Laws developed -> entrapenuers figure a way around them -> new laws created -> new loopholes found -> repeat
I'll start by saying that I do believe that capitalism is pretty much the best we have right now, and has allowed for greater prosperity than other economic systems up to this point.
However, I do think that the public good needs to be taken into account and act as a balance for capitalism sometimes. Housing is a good example for this, as I don't believe the public good is served by allowing property owners to charge as much as they can. Call that socialist if you want; so be it... I do have some socialist leanings.
If we were to repeal rent control tomorrow, rents would shoot up across the board. Formerly rent-controlled apartments would see their rents go up like crazy. Formerly non-rent-controlled apartments might see rent increases slow, but they would almost certainly not drop, at least not for a year or two. Demand is still high (and is still getting higher), and the bay area increasingly houses people who really want to live in SF, and are able to afford higher rents. SF is limited in land area, so, without a massive increase in the housing supply, we're limited in population expansion. With the average & median rent increasing, many people at the low end will be displaced. SF will become a place where only high earners can live, which means most service workers will need to move out of the city and be bused in, or drive, or just fail to find jobs due to lack of transportation options.
That last bit is an example of why I think the public good needs to (through regulation) balance out capitalism sometimes. Lower-income people being unable to live in SF is IMO a bad thing. Increasing the number of cars/buses on the road is a bad thing; causing people to live farther away from their jobs is economically wasteful. Also note that many of the high-income people moving into SF in this scenario will be moving to SF while keeping their peninsula/south bay jobs, further increasing the commute problem.
Definitely agree that regulation and new laws do sometimes form a feedback loop as unintended consequences and loopholes are discovered. But I don't think that's an excuse not to try, because a lightly- or un-regulated market is not going to help, either.
Bluntly, this is naive. More importantly, it does exactly nothing to actually help address the problems at hand. All it does is give you a way to shake your head and make clucking noises as you feel morally superior.
A few years ago, I would have listened to you and probably even agreed. These days, I'm more interested in solutions than I am in moralizing.
> I'm really just trying to understand and provide my perspective, and possibly learn a bit in the process.
Judging by your furious responses and insistence on labeling anyone making a sizable profit as an asshole, I'd say the only one of those goals you're meeting is the one of providing your perspective. Which is to say that landlords are assholes. Thanks. How about something helpful now?
So what do we do to address the problem at hand? It sounds like you'd advocate for a repeal of rent control, because landlords should be able to extract all the profit they can from their properties? That's not going to fix the housing supply issue; all it's going to do is turn SF into a rich-people-only city where service workers need to live elsewhere and get bused in every day. That's not a place I want to live, and would be a direct result of "market forces" -- but not really, because government regulation nullifies market forces in many cases. Rent control is only one part of it... prop 13 and the city's byzantine planning process are others, and there are certainly more.
So, looking for suggestions? Here's what we do:
1. Gut the city's construction planning process. Make it more objective and based on zoning laws and building codes, as well as continuing to include provisions for low-income housing. Raise (and in some areas eliminate) building-height restrictions. Also, residents in the area no longer get a veto on new construction projects. As long as a building proposal follows the rules, it gets a rubber stamp. No discussion.
2. Repeal prop 13 for rental properties, and only allow it to apply to an owner's primary residence (obviously this is more difficult since prop 13 is state and not city law). This recognizes that owning a home gives you an illiquid asset, and fluctuations in property taxes (especially in an area like SF with strongly rising property values) can cause people to need to move. Homeownership should at least still offer that kind of security.
3. Repeal rent control city-wide and replace it with a gov't subsidy tied to renters' income. This subsidy can be funded with extra tax revenue from #2, and can likely be phased out over several years as rents stabilize and drop. I expect that rents will initially rise, but will start to lower again after a year or two under the new rules, and even more after a few more years as #1 reduces (and hopefully eliminates) the deficit in the housing supply. The (temporary) subsidy protects existing tenants until there's enough housing to support people of any economic status.
4. This is more subjective, but: make it more attractive for landlords to buy out their tenants (or just keep them) than to use shady practices like finding reclassification loopholes and bullying by doing the bare minimum required by law to maintain their properties. I'm not sure of the exact mechanisms to do this, but incentives should be aligned so that landlords want to keep good, steady, reliable tenants, even if new tenants might net them some extra cash. Basically we want to create an environment where landlords are mostly happy to keep their current tenants, but while tenants are also not afraid of the prospect of needing to move.
Is that helpful enough?
Where did all this 'profit is evil' talk come from anyway? This is a site dedicated to startups and tech talk, and all of a sudden we have activist student slogans passing for comment?
In reality, in most transactions, both parties profit due to the fact that there is no fixed concept of "worth."
The apple that you bought from your grocer for 50 cents was valued at 40 cents by him and 60 cents by you.
Without it you'd never bother to buy anything because you would gain no value from the transaction.
You said that I value something at 60 cents and the seller values it at 40 cents, therefore I will buy it at 50 cents. Not only is your simple linear model absurdly reductionist, it's just ignorant. If a grocer is willing to sell at 40 cents, I would never pay a 50% markup when I wouldn't have to, your assertion that I would notwithstanding. I would just pay the 40 cents, and therefore the only objective measurement of how what I valued it at would come out at 40 cents. You stating that I actually value it at 60 cents is just you trying to fit a scenario to your fictional model.
Maybe the real life numbers are 45, 50 & 55. Maybe they're 34, 37 & 50. Maybe you really fucking love apples and it's 34, 37 & 5000 in which case go nuts, buy up the whole orchard, and keep all the doctors away for all time.
Maybe those numbers aren't even close because what exactly does an apple cost these days I don't even know exactly.
But the point holds. There is a price at which the transactions happens. Somewhere below that is the producer willingness to sell. The difference between those numbers is the producer surplus. Somewhere above the price is the consumer willingness to pay. The difference between that number and the price is the consumer surplus.
Go find any economics 101 textbook in the known world and you'll have a downward sloping demand curve, and an upward sloping supply curve. They intersect at a market price. Then you get some shaded in areas for the producer and consumer surplus.
If you don't know what one of these graphs looks like then you aren't qualified to participate in any discussion ever about what things should cost. Just shut up and go back to writing shitty software using the worst programming language in general use today.
Supply/demand curves are literally 4th grade curriculum where I come from. So yeah, mastered that shit 20+ years ago. Thanks for assuming though.
You've gone off the rails and are now confusing 'cost' with 'worth' or 'value'. We can only determine a 'value' or 'worth' when an actual transaction occurs. You can't just extrapolate out on a model curve and expect it to hold in the real world, no matter what your theory tells you.
Bottom line is, if a grocer is currently asking 40 cents for an apple, I will transact at that price no matter how much higher I 'value' that apple. I wouldn't pay 60 cents for an apple that a grocer is selling for 40 cents. I wouldn't pay 50 cents for it either.
BTW, ECMAScript is poised to take over the world. Better strap in.