Rent Control Revisited (Boston: 2014, apartments, rental)

[GeePee]

There was a rally held yesterday for revisiting rent control. What is everyone here thoughts on this. Would this cause developers to think twice now? Would it actually benefit the general public? Should we keep government out of our wallets?



https://www.bostonglobe.com/business...qYJ/story.html


https://boston.curbed.com/2020/1/15/...ton-rents-2020

[Boston Shudra]

I don’t know anything about any of this, and this might be a very uninformed opinion but: maybe the state could build its own middle-income public housing the way that we currently have low-income public housing? Rather than trying to regulate landlords and homeowners, which sounds like a headache.

[GeePee]

Originally Posted by iAMtheVVALRUS

I don’t know anything about any of this, and this might be a very uninformed opinion but: maybe the state could build its own middle-income public housing the way that we currently have low-income public housing? Rather than trying to regulate landlords and homeowners, which sounds like a headache.

Interesting proposal. I think that is actually a wonderful idea.

[mysticaltyger]

The core problem with high rents is not addressed by rent control. The underlying issue is not enough housing is being built, which is why rents and home prices skyrocket.

Rent control, subsidized housing, and other below market rate housing schemes are essentially just lottery systems. When you price housing below the market rate, you're always going to get more people who want it than you have supply for, so it doesn't fix anything. The only way to fix the problem is to build more housing. That almost always means relaxing overly strict zoning laws and regulations, which make housing difficult and expensive to build.

Several articles have been written about this in recent years:

Blue America has a problem: Even after adjusting for income, left-leaning metros tend to have worse income inequality and less affordable housing.

There is a deep literature tying liberal residents to illiberal housing policies that create affordability crunches for the middle class. In 2010, UCLA economist Matthew Kahn published a study of California cities, which found that liberal metros issued fewer new housing permits. The correlation held over time: As California cities became more liberal, he said, they built fewer homes.

https://www.theatlantic.com/business...rdable/382045/

[jayrandom]

There isn't a lot that economists agree on. One of those things is that rent control is a bad.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opini...ortages-worse/

Rent control benefits the people who get to live in rent controlled apartments, at least as long as the inevitably delayed maintenance doesn't drag the value of rent control below its market value.

No matter where you stand on the left/right spectrum and what you ultimately want to see out of a housing policy, rent control is a bad way of getting there.

[Boston Shudra]

We could just toss zoning out the window, letting private developers build like gangbusters, and hope it will lower rents. Doing this makes it hard to coordinate infrastructure updates with pop growth. I have relatives in a suburb of Charlotte that are going through this. The town has added subdivisions upon subdivisions upon subdivisions and the public schools and roads have had a hard time keeping up.

I hear Philadelphia has had some novel approaches to facilitating housing development and ownership. Might be wrong. I’ll look into it more later.

[BostonMike7]

Originally Posted by iAMtheVVALRUS

I don’t know anything about any of this, and this might be a very uninformed opinion but: maybe the state could build its own middle-income public housing the way that we currently have low-income public housing? Rather than trying to regulate landlords and homeowners, which sounds like a headache.

Problem is where would you put it. The NIMBYism is strong in this state. Everyone will think it's a great idea as long as they don't build it next to them.


As for the issue in general, I have mixed opinions. I was a renter, and landlord at the same time. As much as I hated having my rent raised every year, I did the same as a landlord to cover my costs with my rental (IE continuously rising taxes and association fees).

[BostonBornMassMade]

Rent control would be fine because there already very low turnover due to high prices. Rent Control wouldn't make a big difference. We want families to be able to stay in place anyway right?

It could also encourage new hghh priced units because rents would be set high to mitigate the lack of increase down the road. That allows the state to take over the market in regards to middle income developments. I could be way off here.

[jayrandom]

Originally Posted by BostonBornMassMade

Rent control would be fine because there already very low turnover due to high prices. Rent Control wouldn't make a big difference. We want families to be able to stay in place anyway right?

It could also encourage new hghh priced units because rents would be set high to mitigate the lack of increase down the road. That allows the state to take over the market in regards to middle income developments. I could be way off here.

Here is an interesting podcast (transcript if you're like me and prefer to read) on the subject:

Why Rent Control Doesn’t Work (Ep. 373) - Freakonomics Freakonomics

[masssachoicetts]

Originally Posted by iAMtheVVALRUS

We could just toss zoning out the window, letting private developers build like gangbusters, and hope it will lower rents. Doing this makes it hard to coordinate infrastructure updates with pop growth. I have relatives in a suburb of Charlotte that are going through this. The town has added subdivisions upon subdivisions upon subdivisions and the public schools and roads have had a hard time keeping up.

I hear Philadelphia has had some novel approaches to facilitating housing development and ownership. Might be wrong. I’ll look into it more later.

^ I like this.