Saying it should have zero negative effect doesn't mean it doesn't. It demonstrably does.
Yes, you keep making these absolute claims that everything is demonstrable, except you don't actually demonstrate anything. You have no explanation for mechanism of action, and you offer no evidence or sources.
On what basis do you claim that rent control discourages developers?
Why would it?
New construction is exempt from rent control.
Rent control on existing apartments (supposedly) causes rents to increase faster than it otherwise would.
So there is increased demand, at artificially high prices - and this makes developers
less inclined to build?
That makes absolutely no sense. Yet you keep insisting it is true and undeniable, and even "demonstrable".
You even go so far as to say it is a "fact", and that understanding the rest of your argument is dependent on acknowledging it.
Why? Why would an investor be less inclined to build where there is MORE of a market at artificially HIGH prices?
It is a vicious cycle of 0% vacancy making landlords reluctant to tear down their old stuff
Again, you are just making claims which not only have no evidence, they don't even make any sense.
If the one way a landlord can increase rent is to tear down and rebuild, how does that make them
less inclined to do so?
Without rent control, tearing down and rebuilding might increase rent because of more units or increased value, but with it they ALSO get the benefit of no longer being bound by rent control.
This is the whole reason that loophole was put in, to encourage development. And it is demonstrably effective, as I pointed out last time - construction is actually happening.
(and making it harder for them to do it if tenants refuse to leave)
False. It is entirely legal to evict if a unit is being taken off the market.
and owner-occupiers to be unable to afford to leave.
again, you are making a categorical statement with both zero evidence and which does not even make any sense.
The only situation in which an owner-occupier can not afford to leave is when they are "underwater" on their mortgage.
That happens when one of two things happen: they get an adjustable rate or interest only loan during a bubble, or the local real estate market becomes depressed.
If a population is growing rapidly, so much so that new construction can barely keep up, then by definition it is not a depressed real estate market.
You are trying to claim that in NY and SF and LA etc people "can't afford" to sell their houses if they want?
You want a "demonstrably" false claim! Come on, are you even being serious anymore? Do you have any idea what the real estate market is like? Average property values for homes in SF have more than doubled in the past 4 years. How, in your mind, does that translate to "can't afford to sell?"
What percentage of people who own homes in areas with skyrocketing property values do you think want to sell
so that they can start renting an apartment in the same city?!!?!?!?!? You really believe that it is only because rents are so high that people aren't selling their houses and then moving into apartments in the same city?
forces the developer to go straight from SFH to huge skyscraper because of the cost of the land
???????????????????????????????????????????
Replacing a SFR with another SFR is obviously not going to increase housing stock!!!!
So now you are saying that (because of rent control) developers will build massively more housing. Which is literally the exact opposite of what you claimed just above.
Of course there will be new construction of housing. It's just, will it be decent two bedroom apartments that a family of four at a wage job can afford?
How do you define "decent"? The standard today is kids don't share a bedroom...
Anyway, you are saying basically "we have to increase the rent more, because otherwise rents might get expensive".
How is raising the rent on that family of four in the 2-bedroom to a price they can't afford causing them to move out better than building new apartments that they can't afford to begin with?
Or will it be $10,000/mo luxury stuff or 2 million dollar townhomes?
If the market could bear 10k luxury stuff, that will ALWAYS be the developers first choice, regardless of rent control. The people who can afford those units don't want to live in Omaha or Cleveland, they want to live in SF and LA and NY. So that's where they get built.
No one will be building 10k units in Richmond, because rich people have no interest in living here.
And no one is building a significant amount of new townhomes in SF, because there is no where for them to go.
You need to go and actually read about the actual effects.
I have. There is a lot of debate about it. There is no way to determine conclusively which effects are due to which input, but there are no effects that can not be fully explained by the actual popularity of a given area.
"Rent only goes up between tenants"
And who is most likely to suddenly need to find a new place to live? The wage worker who can't afford a car. You have to live close to work. If your job moves or you lose it, then you have to move, losing your rent controlled apartment. You aren't a "newcomer" to the city, but rent control has spiked what any other landlord will offer you, so suddenly, you are forced out of the city.
If you are staying in the same city, then how does a new job force you to move?
If your job moved any further than city limits, you already had to move out of the city.
If you are jobless, and other apartments cost more than the one you are in, why would you then move?
I can envision hypothetical scenarios where someone might want to move within the same city (most significantly, an expanding family), but your examples make no sense.
Wealthy people have the time and resources to find rent controlled housing and camp out in it for long enough to benefit from it. Young people and lower income earners do not. This has proven to be the case time and time again.
OK great. Show when and how this is proven.
"Rent control prevents crime increases."
huh?
Who made that claim?
I said crime increases with increased population density. This is actually one of those "demonstrable facts". I put up some links before.
I never made any claim that rent control would effect density one way or the other, that was in reference to my suggesting not trying to infinitely increase housing stock.
Show an area that enacted rent control and had crime go down. Even one.
Well, like I said, I wasn't making that claim to begin with, but since you asked:
SF enacted it in 79. Shortly there after, the massive crime wave peaked, and then subsided as quick as it came.
Although, (again), I'm not claiming a cause and effect relationship. Just pointing out that, well, you say a lot of stuff with confidence that just doesn't pan out in reality.
"It has, and continues to work out well for the millions of people who live in rent controlled apartments."
Has two big (and demonstrably erroneous assumptions):
There's that word again! So, go ahead, demonstrate it!!
1. Those millions of people are living in an apartment that is affordable by any reasonable definition.
So you are claiming that if the rent on those apartments was HIGHER than it is now, it would then be
more affordable, by any reasonable definition? At some point you have to... wait.... I get it... I feel like an idiot. You are trolling me. I'm not sure if you have been all along, but with this line you are obviously trolling me. Why do I get sucked in so easily be internet trolls?
New housing units (#). These are "metropolitan areas" and yes these cities are incomparable for lots of reasons but whatever...
Houston - 56,901
San Francisco - 13,386
New York - 86,424
Los Angeles - 34,084
Denver - 18,326
So that data means nothing right? By itself, the numbers are all over the place. And I think the SF one is low just because there's a bunch of cities crammed up next to each other there and does San Francisco-Hayland-Oakland metro area mean all of them or not? I'm not from there. But lets just roll with it since it's about what Bakari was saying is going on there.
Then lets look at (and I apologize for how brutally simple this analysis is, housing is much more complicated I know, just trying to illustrate one aspect here) population increases:
Houston: 40,032
San Francisco: 12,279
New York: 55,211
Denver: 15,582
Los Angeles: 34,943
Umm... you are trying to gloss over a pretty enormous factor. The entire SF Bay Area over 145 times as large as the city. 7.65 million people vs 800,000. The Bay Area's population increases 90,000 in a year. So this 2nd number must be SF only. But SF proper only is producing about 4000 units a year. So your first number is probably Bay Area wide.
The majority of the Bay Area's 100 cities over 9 counties does not have rent control.
So, in other words, unless you can get some better labeled data (sources would be nice), then it is pretty pointless and meaningless to then analyze numbers
Then we do some math, new housing units per new resident:
Houston: 1.42
San Francisco: 1.09
Denver: 1.17
Los Angeles: 0.97
New York: 1.56
So this tells us not as much as you might think. Nothing really.
Yes. Exactly.
You need more than one new unit of housing per new resident. Especially in land-locked areas, the rate needs to be closer to 1.6-1.8 per new resident to keep up with retirement of old housing stock
are you not counting replacing an old building with a new one as new housing? You can't have it both ways.
and space-flation (everyone seems to want just a little more space).
That's a want, not a need. If you choose to move to an already dense city, you are going to sacrifice space over what you could afford somewhere else. That's just physical reality.
The new room is got vertically and that costs a little more,
Yes, right. Which is why the skyscrapers get built. The same ones you just a moment ago claimed were a result of rent control.
so housing costs will (and should) go up.
Right. The cost of those newly built skyscrapers. The ones that are exempt from rent control.
You need that housing spread out over the whole area (zoning restrictions can seriously drive housing crunches all on their own).
which whole area? the city? the county? the metropolitan region? What if a disproportionate number of people only want to live in a few neighborhood in a few cities? Should you still spread out evenly, even though it still means a deficit in those neighborhoods?
Now, what could you do to actually address the problem? Supplement the cost of rent with direct payments to qualified tenants, paid for with taxes on luxury unit rental income. Discourages fancy-pants housing while increasing the supply of tenants who can afford your reasonable apartment building.
We already have that. Its called "section 8". A lot of landlords won't accept it, because, well: "When you get shit all over by the people you're helping you'll start to understand"
In 2015 alone, 11% of the population moved. 35% of those were at or near the poverty line in terms of income nationwide. It is higher if you adjust for local poverty thresholds which vary dramatically, particularly in places with high cost of living, like rent control areas.
Source: http://www.census.gov/data/tables/2015/demo/geographic-mobility/cps-2015.html
"at or near"
More than 35% of American's are considered at or near the poverty line. Up to 50% by some estimates:
http://www.salon.com/2013/05/30/half_of_americans_living_below_or_near_poverty_line_partner/https://www.mailman.columbia.edu/public-health-now/news/nearly-half-american-children-living-near-poverty-lineSo your data doesn't exactly support your argument that poor people move disproportionately[/quote]