[uncomputation]

> I'm a part-time Real Estate investor, and I would never invest in a city that had a rental cap

Good. It is real estate "investors" like you that have contributed to the Bay Area, and California in general, pricing people out and becoming a rent-only housing economy where only the rich of the rich can even dream of buying a fairly modest house. Housing should not make you investment-style returns like the stock market. You're profiting by rent-seeking, arbitrary zoning requirements, and NIMBYism driving up the price of housing constantly just so you can make a nice "investment." Housing and shelter are for people to live, not to extract money for real estate investors.

> You end up putting a bunch of poor people in one building

Have you considered that poor people also need a place to live and maybe that doesn't involve you leaching every percent of profit you can?

> Want to promote more affordable housing? Keep the government far away

Section 8 housing in LA - as house prices have surged to multi-million two-bedroom homes since COVID - can lower prices at least as low as $400/mo after the voucher. You are simply and transparently lying for your own benefit and it is shameful.

[pitaj]

It's a lack of development of new housing for decades that caused the high prices we see in places like the Bay Area.

[pixelatedindex]

And the ones that do get built are promoting “luxury living” when people just want “basic living”. None of the new construction is no-frills apartments, they’re all glitz and glam with stupid high rents - 2br is about 5K in some of these places. That’s ridiculously high. There’s even an apartment complex that advertises a redwood grove in the center - that’s just extra cost that could have been saved and passed on to the renters.

[pitaj]

You need to fill out the highest tier, as that opens up mid-tier housing for lower paying renters. Otherwise it pushes the highest-paying renters into the mid-tier housing stock, raising the prices for all below.

[pixelatedindex]

I really don't understand this logic. Just income-cap the rentals, so high paying renters aren't eligible for the low-tier housing. Only filling out highest tier means that only high tier housing gets built.

[pitaj]

Nope. Primarily, people moving into the new housing lower cost pressure on lower tier housing. And pretty quickly, the highest tier is saturated and lower tier housing is built.

Or higher tier housing is overbuilt and drives down costs of all tiers.

[tomjakubowski]

It could just be where I've chosen to live, but I have never seen a new "lower tier" apartment building go up. It's been "luxury" apartments (though actually built fairly cheaply, just expensive to rent…) 100% of the time.

[pixelatedindex]

> And pretty quickly, the highest tier is saturated and lower tier housing is built.

That’s definitely not what happens. Highest tier is saturated, developers say that “the market only wants highest tier housing”, and so more of the same gets built.

> Or higher tier housing is overbuilt and drives down costs of all tiers.

The opposite is what’s happening - the highest tier gets more and more expensive, and the lowest tier goes up too.

[namibj]

So if you catch a raise you are evicted?

[pixelatedindex]

Not necessarily - maybe your rent can just go up to market rate + 10% (or some nominal fee because you’re taking up spots in the low income section). Maybe an extra clause that you have to move out within X months after going above the limit.

The laws just needs to disincentivize staying there when you’re not eligible. You obey traffic laws because it’s costly to ignore them. There can also be some buffer to income so you don’t have drastic changes just because you earn an extra 5 to 10K or something per year (depending on family size).