[busterarm]

The rent control laws in NYC aren't even nearly as bad as SF, despite how much they get demonized here on HN.

In NYC units that might be _actually cheap_, as in rent controlled and not stabilized, number roughly 17k units _in total_. And only about 1/3 of those are significantly below market or in desirable neighborhoods. It's almost insignificant and the number of rent controlled units has gone down by roughly HALF in the last 5 years, because the tenants in them are dying and income limits on any descendants usually kick the units out of being controlled into stabilized.

NYC has a much larger number of rent stabilized units, which is somewhere near 1/3 of all available units that are renting at or below $2700 (twice the national average, btw). The overwhelming majority of these are within a few hundred dollars of market rate.

There are about 4.2M housing units in NYC with roughly 30k being added every year. The "cheap" rent-controlled units are a rounding error.

That is not anything like the situation folks in SF are rightfully railing against.

[heyoni]

I think rent stabilized apartments can go a lot higher than $2700. Lots of luxury buildings are taking tax abatements in exchange for rent stabilization and setting aside a number of rent controlled units.

[busterarm]

Nope. Units deregulate at $2700. Also there's no such thing as new rent controlled or rent stabilized units since 1970.

There's other housing programs like Mitchell-Lama, some that are like what you mentioned, but that's a completely separate thing and a small amount of units. "Rent controlled" and "Rent stabilized" are technical terms in NY.

[bardam]

Your information is correct in general, but there are many exceptions that prove the grandparent correct. My apartment was built in the last 10 years (i.e., after 1970), rents for close to $4k, and IS rent stabilized. See information here:

https://www1.nyc.gov/site/rentguidelinesboard/resources/rent...

Specifically:

"Also, some newly constructed buildings may be stabilized due to a 421-a or J-51 tax exemption even if the rent is $2,000 or more."

A program that a significant number of developers have taken advantage of.

[heyoni]

Yup, that's exactly what I was thinking about. Same deal here, rent is nearly $4k but I know it can only go up by guideline amounts.

[busterarm]

Do tell me how your $4k apartment rental, at nearly 3 times the national average rent and above market for most of NYC, is the scourge of housing markets, forcing rents up for everyone and preventing new construction.

Because that's what rent regulation's detractors are arguing, even though your empirical evidence (and mine) suggest the opposite. That's the context we're discussing this in.

[heyoni]

OP and my apartments are actually new developments benefiting from these breaks.

[busterarm]

Missing the forest for the trees.

[nicwolff]

NY State repealed high-rent deregulation in the Housing Stability and Tenant Protection act of 2019. https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/bills/2019/s6458

[jcranberry]

I live in a rent stabilized apartment in NYC and my rent is 3400.

[irq11]

The rent control laws in SF aren’t even as bad as HN comments would have you believe.

Rent control doesn’t apply to new construction in SF. It also allows a regulated annual increase, and rent automatically jumps back up to market upon a number of different conditions - not the least of which is that the owner can push you out to renovate the building!

HN commenters are usually just repeating stuff they heard somewhere, and have no idea what the laws actually say.

Moreover, while there are indeed lots of publications on the theoretical impacts of rent control, few of those publications consider laws as they actually exist, or if they do, the scope of the impacts is rarely communicated when translated into HN talking points. Every study I’m aware of has shown, at worst, diffuse, long-term negative impacts to housing costs. Meanwhile, many of them do exactly what they set out to do: stabilize short-term prices for vulnerable populations.

These laws are simply not the boogeymen that comments here make them seem.

[refurb]

Rent control in SF really is that bad. Rent increase limits are 60% of CPI, so it can’t even match inflation. If your costs go up (utilities) or you want to do capital improvements, good luck getting the rent board to approve a pass through. Want to prevent other people than the tenant from moving into a 1 bedroom? Tough, can’t say no to that, it just has to be under 3 people. Want to move into your own house? Sure, just pay the tenant a few tens of thousands in “pay off”.

SF rent control is absolutely onerous and definitely shrinks the pool of potential landlords and thus potential units.

[toastal]

Why should I care about the woes of landlords as opposed to renters?

[cm2187]

Because if it is uneconomical to rent out, there are few units available to rent and the few that are are super expensive. And the property won't be maintained properly. These unintended consequences ultimately hit tenants.

In Paris there is a similar impact of bad regulation. It has become so hard to expel a tenant that has stopped paying that landlords will demand extraordinary guaranties: bank credit lines, guaranties from relatives, sometimes even medical exam, etc and will be super picky. I knew of a foreign investment banker, high salary, not allowed to get in financial dispute because of his profession, who just couldn't find a place to rent in Paris because he couldn't provide some of those.

[jjav]

Because it is hurting the would-be renter group even more?

I personally know two people who are renting rent-controlled apartments in SF and don't live in them. Their lives have moved elsewhere and they don't need the place anymore. One uses it as a weekend getaway and the other one visits rarely.

Thanks to rent control their rent is so cheap that it's worth hanging on to it even though they don't live there.

So these two units are off the rental market effectively forever, sitting empty most of the time.

[icebraining]

Because landlords start being unable to afford repairs, and you get a bunch of decrepit buildings falling apart all over the city (with all the dangers that implies, not just to occupants, but to nearby buildings as well). It happened in my home town, and it wasn't pretty.

Landlords are not social security. It's probably better for the city to forcefully buy them out and create a new management model of the buildings than to impose strangling limits on prices.

[Jweb_Guru]

Rents are growing insanely fast in SF compare to anything else. The idea that landlords can't afford to make repairs because they aren't extracting maximum rent from the property is completely ludicrous on the face of it. Do you actually believe these arguments?

[dang]

That crosses into personal attack. Please don't do that on HN.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

[refurb]

I know a few landlords and that’s exactly what’s happening. I’m not sure why you find it hard to believe.

When you have a 3 unit building and everyone is paying less than 1/3 the market rate, it’s not worthwhile in the least for a landlord to fix up the building beyond the absolute minimum. Contractor rates have skyrocketed in SF, so even just repainting the building might cost $15k, which might represent several years of profit.

[TuringNYC]

You assume the rents are actually going to and staying with the landlords. In reality, landlords also have bills --

big bills (mortgages, property taxes) and bills that move [upwards] dynamically (gas, electricity, water, repairmen).

[icebraining]

Are you talking about all rents, or controlled ones? The post above wrote that rent control rules in SF limit increases to "60% of CPI, so it can’t even match inflation". If that's false, then my post doesn't apply, sure.

[lotsofpulp]

One possible scenario is if a landlord purchased property at a price factoring in assuming certain increases in rent, then they’re constrained by the debt payments.

[tathougies]

Do you think contractor costs and material costs are going down?

[lr4444lr]

Because the result is that small landlords who can't deal with the fixed costs hassles simply sell out and consolidate into larger ones with more clout with politicians to weaken renter rights and legal resources to fight pesky tenants whom they simply don't want, or create shared blacklist databases like has been done in New York. If you're going to gird up for class warfare, realize that tenants are probably going to lose as long as zoning restricts your options

[amyjess]

My experience has always been that dealing with a large PMC like IMT or Greystar is far preferable to dealing with some guy who's renting his property out.

[34679]

Wow, I literally belly laughed.

If a renter can't find a landlord to rent from, then what?

"Why should I care about the woes of water treatment plants as opposed to water drinkers?" Do you want drinkable water, or not?

[aaronblohowiak]

Because shrinking the number of landlords shrinks the number of units available, raising rents, _hurting renters_.

[falsedan]

are these vanishing landlord eating their properties or just throwing them into the sea

[eru]

That reasoning works on land. (Hence a land value tax can't be passed on to tenants.)

But it doesn't work on the houses on top of the land. Because we can build more or less of them. Or higher.

[macspoofing]

No. They let population growth take care of that while they decide not to invest in rental properties.

Your flippant argument can be flipped around too. If there is a housing shortage, by what mechanism does rent control conjure new housing units?

[icebraining]

No, just leaving them vacant while the value increases.

[Double_a_92]

Also it lowers incentive to build new units if renting them out becomes too much of a hassle.

[macspoofing]

Ok. Then care about the tenants. Do you have one shred of evidence that rent control, broadly, helps tenants? Because every economist I ever heard on this topic, left or right, argues rent control is bad for tenants.

[dfilppi]

Rent control is good for politicians getting elected. No point in analyzing farther than that.

[rayiner]

Unless you have the capital to build your own house or apartment, you need landlords to put up their own capital to do that. It’s not like landlords are just assigned houses for free from the government to then lord over renter peons.

[vixen99]

Because landlords supply housing and renters don't.

[mruts]

Why should I care about the woes of you opposed to me? Why should I care about the woes of the poor opposed to the rich?

[ryan_lane]

A lot of what you're saying in here is blatantly incorrect or misleading. Water is frequently covered in utilities, but other utilities generally are not. Leases are very specific on the number of people in a unit for rent controlled apartments and is one the few things a tenant can be evicted for. The board frequently approves pass throughs. Increases tend to be higher than inflation.

If you lease out your house and you want to take back ownership, yeah, you need to pay out the tenant and that's completely fair. You're upending another family's lives, and they may not be able to afford to stay. You're paying them moving costs and covering a period of time of adjustment for them. If you think this is unfair, you have poor morals.

Also, for good measure: fuck the landlords.

[refurb]

You need to do more research.

The rent increase law is 60% of CPI. Look it up.

SF introduced a new law a couple years ago that additional people can live in a unit even if they are not on the lease. They only instituted caps on how many. Google search it.

Plenty of apartments have not only water, but also heating included in the rent. If that goes up drastically, the rent board will likely tell the landlord “tough”.

And I’m not against buying out tenants. I am against them having to pay $100,000 or more.

----

Sources:

This amount is based on 60% of the increase in the Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers in the Bay Area, which was 4.4% as posted in November 2018 by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.[1]

Legislation that went into effect November 9, 2015 allows tenants covered under rent control to add occupants, if reasonable, despite restrictions in the rental agreement.

[1]https://sfrb.org/sites/default/files/Document/Form/571%20All... [2]https://www.sftu.org/roommates/

[irq11]

You need to exaggerate less.

The maximum rent increase rate is 60% of the trailing twelve months CPI in the bay area. But landlords’ costs do not scale with the CPI. Mortgage rates are fixed (if a landlord has a mortgage at all), taxes are independent of CPI, and principal+interest+taxes are the vast majority of a landlord’s expenses. Maintenance is typically a small fraction of that number.

Landlords are not obligated to pay your heat or water under rent control. Mine certainly never did.

The roommate law changes you mention are not rent control, but tenant protections applicable to all rentals in SF. The 2015 change brought rent controlled units up to par, because landlords were evicting people for doing things like getting married or switching roommates (horrors!) Basically: preventing predatory landlords from being scumbags.

I’m going to go with the GP on this and say that if you think people should have their rent hiked for getting married or changing roommates or having a kid, you have poor morals.

In essence, you don’t like being told what you can do, you have a theory that it hurts the housing market, and you’re inventing reasons to justify your theory of reality.

[refurb]

Exaggerate? I said it was 60% of CPI and it is. Yes, the mortgage is likely fixed, but expenses such as maintenance and other associated costs are not - renovation cost have gone through the roof the last 10 years. Maintenance is generally 1% of the value of the building, so in SF that can be tens of thousands per year.

No, landlords are not obligated to pay heat or water (I never said that!), but many buildings (all the ones I lived in) do not have separate meters for water and sometimes heating, the landlord just pays the bill. Rent to a single person and they have two other people move in and use 200% more water? Tough shit says the rent board!

And the other problem with allowing additional people to live there is that if those additional people can demonstrate that they were an "established tenant", then they get full rent control and tenancy even after the original tenant (only name on the lease!) leaves. Show the rent board the lease they signed? Tough shit says the rent board.

It sounds like you aren't that familiar with the tenant laws in SF, so I'm not surprised you don't think it's a problem. Suffice to say being a landlord in SF is not a very attractive proposition, so it shouldn't surprise anyone that we have a housing shortage.

[thatfrenchguy]

... But Prop 13 guarentees every landlord in the state that they won’t have to pay their share, and they get it even on >1980 construction, unlike rent control.

It seems fair to me that if you’re going to protect landlords (and companies !) you need to protect tenants as well.

[bobcostas55]

>Rent control doesn’t apply to new construction in SF.

Conveniently, SF doesn't allow new construction either.