[michaelchisari]

My mother-in-law is a land lord in Los Angeles

I'm a tenant in Los Angeles, and a staunch supporter of rent control. Knowing that my rent (which is already high) can only go up so much year-over-year provides some bit of stability as the tech industry devours eastward from Santa Monica.

[Gibbon1]

I've been paying attention to what economists say fairly rigorously for the last ten years and they have some huge blind spots. One of them is they completely and utterly ignore the importance of income and social stability. Which is they see any expenditures needed to provide those as a unacceptable drag on society.

[rayiner]

> they ignore the importance of income and social stability

They don't ignore it, they're just not ignorant about the costs of income and social stability.

For example: I grew up in a relatively modest house (3BR, 1,100 square feet) about 40 minutes outside of D.C. Growing up, there were quite a few young families in our neighborhood. Average household income was probably about $70k/year in today's money--relatively well off but not even what you'd call "upper middle class." Today, you'd need about $130k/year to afford to live in the same house. You're talking about a completely different class of people at those two income levels. It's two people with average jobs (maybe even without a four-year degree), versus two people with mid-level white-collar jobs (GS-11, since this is D.C.). It's people who had kids in their 20s versus people who put off having kids for 5-10 years to focus on their careers.

Today, the people I know starting families in the area are professionals making multiples of what my parents and our neighbors made at a similar stage in their lives. Instead of playing the housing bubble game, my wife and I commute in 60+ minutes each way. Partly because it enables us to raise our kids in a neighborhood with young families. But also just out of spite.

All this "stability" is a huge drag on young people that proponents of things like rent control ignore. That grandma living in her rent-controlled apartment is displacing some family that now has to live out further and end up seeing the kids they put off having for fewer hours each day.

[mywittyname]

The population has grown such that urban areas have far less acreage per person than they use to, so there's more competition for housing in that neighborhood.

Plus, income distributes follow a pareto distribution: in DC a 60th percentile family earns between ~35% more money than an 50th percentile family does, and a 70th percentile family earns ~35% more than a 60th family does, etc.

Those two factors are behind the explosion in housing prices around the nation. The same number of people can afford to pay substantially more for housing than they could previously. When you were growing up, your parents were competing with median income families for housing. But today, you're competing with ~70th percentile families for the same housing (per your income assessment).

The solution is to tear down low-density suburbs and replace them with high density residencies. But there's no incentive to do this because people are more than willing to just spend more time commuting so they can have a yard to mow on the weekends.

[rayiner]

> The solution is to tear down low-density suburbs and replace them with high density residencies. But there's no incentive to do this because people are more than willing to just spend more time commuting so they can have a yard to mow on the weekends.

It’s hard to tell what people actually want. The lots in my neighborhood, laid out in the 1930s, has a standard plot size of 1/15 of an acre. This is a suburb of detached single family homes. A few people have doubled up the lots, but for the most part people just deal with having no yard. Today, the minimum lot size is five times bigger, 1/3 of an acre! So is there no incentive to build denser because people are willing to commute more to have the space, or because it’s illegal to do anything other than build ultra low density housing?

[antisthenes]

> Instead of playing the housing bubble game, my wife and I commute in 60+ minutes each way. Partly because it enables us to raise our kids in a neighborhood with young families. But also just out of spite.

Who exactly is being spited here when you waste 10% of your life sitting in a car 'commuting' ?

[rayiner]

Each buyer that refuses to bid on an inner-suburb house drives the market price down by some real, but infinitesimally small, amount. Symbolic, sure, but I can't in good conscience bid some split level in a 1950s Levittown development up to $600k.

[icelancer]

>> One of them is they completely and utterly ignore the importance of income and social stability.

This is literally an entire field of focus of economists and one of the fastest growing ones in the field. Have you considered that maybe you are the one that is ignoring the second-order effects of being a proponent of rent control and how it helps a specific person over a population?

[Gibbon1]

Or perhaps maybe you ignore that that unfettered capital and a flattened banking systems so beloved of economists is the actual root cause of these problems?

Fundamentally modern economics despises the use of any other type of social control and signaling other then capital. Solution's to all problems must be in the context of markets.

One can see the effect that has had on middle and lower income families. And on our political systems. Where families are starved of resources and politicians are fearful of exercising independent political power on behalf of the voters.

That's the system that economists insisted was going to work much better than the system we had before.

[kemiller]

Would you rather have rent control, or just lower rents overall? For the sake of argument. Because that's the thesis: rent control is partially responsible for the out of control rents.

[mjevans]

I would rather see rents controlled in an area by requiring that sufficient housing is built.

Address the issue with more supply.

(At a livable standard of living, including proper sound isolation and fresh air, and even a space for vehicle storage* because people need to leave the city some time... *: Having an in city goods and services transport layer in weather controlled environments that leads to peripheral IO structures such as mega parking garages is fine.)

[gwright]

> requiring that sufficient housing is built.

I realize what you are trying to say (I think), but your phrasing is curious.

Shortages are almost always caused by government intervention in a market by increasing the burden for suppliers and/or capping prices. There is no need to mandate anything, but instead just let developers do what they already want to do, build. It is the prohibitions (zoning regulations) on development that are the problem, not disinterest by developers.

[mjevans]

Actually construction wants to expend the least effort for the most profit. Given how critical the housing gap is in most areas* (that are near jobs) right now all that 'wants' to be built is the upper end of housing. If the market hadn't reached these levels that /would/ be fine, since then previous housing from that category would depreciate in to the lower income strata in an actual trickle down method. What will happen instead is that only enough housing will be built to maintain the current status of an unhealthy market.

In order to have an actual //correction// in current trends directed building must be several times beyond a normal build rate to make up for the decades of under-performance.

[michaelchisari]

I'd rather tackle things like speculation and improper use (high volume airbnb) before going after rent controls.