[jjav]

> where 3% rent control is typical

> landlords exploit this by neglecting repairs

To be fair, if rent can never go up more than 3% per year, how long until the landlord can't afford to do any repairs?

Property tax goes up 2% every year, so there's only 1% headroom. If some other expense starts to go up wildly (such as insurance has been doing for years now) it can eat that up and then the landlord is losing money every month, which leads to abandoned maintenance. Which isn't good for anyone.

[dv_dt]

In Los Angeles, it seems to be 4% per year + and additional 1% per covered utility. In addition, the controls only apply to older units. This 3% average in major cities in CA notion is a floating assumption without any hard analysis backing it as far as I've read. https://la.lawsoup.org/legal-guides/tenant-renter/rent-contr...

The property tax increase is at a max of 2% cap, it has not been a full 2% most years in my experience (anecdotally in my area).

[Retric]

Property tax is a finite fraction of a landlords costs, it could go up by 3% and the headroom exists on the rest of their expenses.

Further if all expenses increase by 3%, then profit also increases by 3%. With decades of inflation well below 3% landlords weren’t having issues affording repairs, they simply weren’t getting the maximum benefit from the area’s prosperity increasing.