This is yet another reason in the long list of reasons why rent control is a bad policy.

I don't disagree, but it's important to remember that when rent control is proposed, it's because some people are very desperate. It would behoove us to suggest viable alternatives every time it's proposed and we shoot it down.

After my father died, my mother rented out the lower floor of her home. I think your definition of desperate is unfair it it includes only tenants. Not all "landlords" are taking on the headache of renting out units because they are professional landlords -- many are similarly disparate, have mortgage payments, property tax, repairs, utilities, etc.

I'd be in more favor of rent control if it would also freeze property taxes, electrician bills, utility costs. It is turtles all the day down.

Most places with rent control also have similar limits on property tax increases. In fact, I think most places have limits on property tax increases because property taxes are largely just some number pulled out of the ass of some bureaucrat.

Utilities across the US also have regulated rates.

Yeah, lots of the problems with rent control are related to it being an unfair disadvantage to some (usually not all) landlords and they have expenses as well.

But again: the reason rent control is passed is because enough people with significant political leverage were hurting. We need to be able to show them a better alternative if we don't want the pain of rent control's (un?)intended consequences to linger.

The alternative is allowing more housing development.

The real alternative is more housing development plus treating housing as a social good rather than an investment, but that's a long-term goal, it's not gonna happen overnight.

The government could build affordable housing and rent it out at a reasonable price. "Council houses" as they are called in the UK are built very well. They are often ugly, but I'm sure that these days they can be built well, cheaply and made to look OK.

The government could start by removing hurdles to build. The amount of hassle one has to go through in California in order to build housing is staggering.

When I visited a friend in England I accidentally stayed at a council estate that someone put up on AirBNB illegally. While it wasn't a slum, it definitely wasn't "just OK". I suspect the reason why that particular unit didn't look like a slum is because the owners were renting it out and doing their best to keep it nice. Not a single bit of that place was built well. Maybe it was cheap. Looked OK from the outside but inside it was like some background location for a movie that's about to experience an apocalypse.

What was specifically wrong? Structural issues or cosmetic. A private house from 1960 that hasn't been renovated since, unless carefully maintained will also look shit on the inside. Look at property that is auctioned in the UK, for example.

I got the impression that council estates are newer than that. However, the floors in the general areas (stairs, lobby, halls) were not cared for. The portal from the hall to the unit had a weird, rough tear in the floor right along the door jamb. I noticed once I crossed it that the unit was a half centimeter lower than the hallway. The fixtures (lights, plumbing, switches) were absolute penny quality. Very little hot water (which seemed dire since tea is so popular). The bathtub was on top of a cabinet, which I thought was really weird and unsafe. It didn't seem like an aftermarket thing- it looked like the tub was built like that.

0/10 would not use AirBNB again. Sleep on a friend's couch or floor, or shell out the money for a hotel. Or use a hostel if money is tight.

It was a huge oopsy. I haven't booked through them again.

There are a number of "housing projects" in the US that turned into rampant crime nests. US politicians are largely wary of such projects right now.

The vast majority of council houses in the U.K. are owned by private landlords who rent to the council.

No one wants to live in Social housing projects in the U.K. and for a good reason they are all rubbish, the U.K. has had some of the worst designed and built social blocks in the world many of them were demolished within 1-2 decades.

Stuffing poor people into high density housing is a horrible idea every study shows that spreading them out is not only cheaper but also much more beneficial to them.

Counterpoints:

1. Not all social housing is high rise or high density. Look outside of the cities for example - new towns. Lessons can be learned this time.

2. Much of the social housing was sold off in the 80's I think, the trick is to keep government ownership of it, not sell it for a pittance and let private landlords profit from price increases.

Outside of the cities these are still high density, just instead of a 30 stories block those are 3-4 stories blocks in the burbs.

Concentrating poor and vulnerable people isn't a good strategy they do better when they are surrounded by the better off, having 2 low income families on a street would produce a much better outcome and shoving 200 of them.

Social housing in the UK is complex, at some point nearly 80% of the people lived in social housing, it wasn't for low income families but rather for nearly anyone but the most affluent which often held titles and on the other spectrum the most remote and rural communities.

Social housing was seen as a means to bring workers into the cities during the industrialization of the UK.

Today despite the fact that anyone is still eligible outside of political corruption which ironically nearly exclusively plagues Labour councillors, MP's and party officials which somehow jump to the front of the queue despite earning well above the mean council housing is seen as a solution for the working poor.

Councils already offer rent assistance, have council properties which are used to temporary house vulnerable people, building more of those won't help just look what happens when you have council flats in new build projects, drugs, anti social behaviour and damage to properties simply due to the high concentration of these individuals.

So while having 20-30% social flats in a new build project might seem like a good idea the only thing that it causes is a huge backlash from the regular tenants due to this behaviour and nearly always they end up winning.

I don't think it exemplifies why rent control is bad. 6 months free is 50% off annualized. It's just a very simple, easy-to-execute strategy for keeping the rent on paper high.

excuse me, but dangerous for who exactly? You mean your future returns on investments will be lower on your rental property? How exactly is that dangerous? Is someone's life in danger? If anything, lower rents allow more people to afford housing, making it less dangerous.

Let me guess, you have huge problem with the homeless situation, but are unwilling to consider lowering rents? Is that right?

So a rent reduction by another name?

Yep. My landlord did this with me. My rent is still the same amount but we created an additional 'discount' agreement on top of the original lease to lower it by a substantial amount.

If a lot of landlords start exploiting that loophole, I wouldn't be surprised if the law were revised to be based on the average rent over a year, or something similar.

They wouldn't have to change it, because that is factored in. The law states:

"In determining the lowest gross rental amount pursuant to this section, any rent discounts, incentives, concessions, or credits offered by the owner of such unit of residential real property and accepted by the tenant shall be excluded."

So if your rent is $3k/month, and the landlord gives you 3 months rent-free, your rent according to AB 1482 is still $3k.

That doesn't mean the law cant change.

No, but it means the law was expressly with to account for this circumstance, so it isn't a "loophole".

I think the only effect of that would be to prevent landlords from giving free months of rent - better to lose a tenant than permanently have lower rents which may not be sustainable.

There are a million ways around that - for example, the landlord could employ the tenant to clean and tidy the property.

The obvious fix would be to make it like tax evasion (illegal) vs. avoidance (rational behaviour with a morally questionable extreme) - viz. to a large degree the line is up for interpretation, coming down to the spirit of the law and the motivation behind what was done.

That really would be the best legislation. A simple calc of the rent of the first 12 months of the lease becomes the base rent.

This is already the case in Berkeley.

Particularly in California -- it makes no sense for landlords to pay artificially low property taxes. Prop 13 should be reformed so you pay property taxes on the market rate of the property if you're renting it out.

> it makes no sense for landlords to pay artificially low property taxes

The core problem is Prop 13, not that Prop 13 doesn't exclude for-profit properties. There are a ton of property/owner classes that should absolutely not get the Prop 13 discount. Malcolm Gladwell did an episode on why golf courses (specifically member-owned courses) in California are massive misallocations due to Prop 13.

It's not low when you first buy, even for years after. Rates can effectively start around %1.5 to %1.2 percent depending on the city.

That's because entrenched property owners are paying artificially low taxes due to prop 13. Repealing it would equalize the tax burden.

While I agree that property taxes could come down if Prop 13 was eliminated, I highly doubt that would ever happen. The gov't could never turn down a new pot of money.

Repealing prop 13 would not reduce rates for new buyers. It would only make it harder for them to retain their properties as the taxes rise.

Not sure why this was downvoted. The reality in SF and many other locations is that supply has been artificially limited and landlords who bought years ago have been making enormous profits. I don't know that I'd describe it as "giving back" but there is a market recalibration that is justifiable and I won't lose too much sleep worrying about landlords in SF who make 30% less than they do now.

But they aren’t the part of the problem that is accountable for it. In a democracy you should expect that everybody will be appealing to the government to protect their own interests. The NIMBYs quite obviously do this. But it’s the local governments that implement the NIMBY-protecting policies. The local governments are the ones accountable to the people, not the NIMBYs. I imagine the delinquent politicians are quite happy when people point the finger at landlords instead of them.

> There are many people and players involved-like the willingness of people to pay so much of their income to housing

You are saying that "the supply line isn't to blame for the demand line" when the problem is where they intersect.

I realize Im oversimplifying the supply constraints because landlords aren't all of the NIMBY problem.

I agree. It’s a faulty line of reasoning. I’ve felt it before though so it might be a “gut feeling” fallacy.

I think it's only faulty because it's incomplete, but the demand side is a real factor. There are tons of discussions here and elsewhere trying to figure out how to "recreate Silicon Valley elsewhere" (which would theoretically spread the demand across a much larger area).

Another end is making it more difficult to flip real estate as a career. But that’s at the buy instead of rent demand side-but they’re totally related and affect each other.

No times been better than post-covid for a desire to branch SV outward. My two cents would be looking at how to employ the people outside SV. Like is it noise about quality of their education or abilities? Not being able to interact with them locally?

I had this thought recently to make a programming “agency”. How to structure an organization that actually works on a programming task comparably to how a 1-3 person team would, but regardless of program complexity. Wonder if this and hiring people to WFH are compatible.

If that were the end of it, I'd agree. Except for the massive amounts of NIMBYism strangling the market by preventing new supply from entering the market to meet the demand.