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.