Rent Control: Classic or Dud?

At 250 sq ft, you can still theoretically park a car in that garage and have the bathroom meet code -- maybe the sink isn't in the bathroom, but outside, depending on size, layout, location of plumbing pipes, etc?

i see we're really zeroing in on a solution to the urban housing crisis: eliminate all that blasted big-government red tape

some of that red tape is important: the requirements for affordable housing, and anti-discrimination measures that factor in, etc. A lot of basic life safety stuff in building and fire code is super important.

But if you haven't had to actually deal with how these things get implemented and enforced, and the double standards that often come into play ... it's like saying people shouldn't complain about institutional racism because we have laws that prevent this, even though in practice, they often don't.

er... wait, no, it's not like that? unless your analogy is just "it's just like saying something's not a huge deal when for me it poses a substantial hassle." in which case you could just throw institutional racism into any disagreement?

from the POV of a renting urbanite it's the other way around - we're saying there's a serious crisis massively affecting the quality of life of millions and all means available should be brought to bear. i threw in changes to code as one area that could be explored to further constrain the market. and now i'm hearing from homeowners about what a pain in the neck it is to comply with the code. so it feels like you're saying "the problem is not in fact urgent" or i guess maybe "sure it sounds like an urgent problem, but what're you gonna do? regulating the market just leads to me having to fill out forms, it's a kafkaesque nightmare out here." but maybe i missed a post where you framed some alternative solution to the crisis.

one of the problems is that the constraints end up having unintended consequences on affordable housing developers and groups/people wanting to create affordable housing by converting previously "illegal" occupancies into legal ones. Meanwhile, the large developers of market rate buildings absorb the costs of those constraints (and use them to assert that they can't build cheaper housing because it costs so much to build).

The way these agencies (planning, zoning, building, fire, etc), in practice, treat people that want to build affordable housing, is super sketchy and intolerant, and people/organizations that don't have deep political connections have no recourse.

For example, they will do things like say, "oh, you have paperwork showing that this is legal? well, that doesn't match what we have on file. ... oh yeah, and our files are kinda disorganized and we lost a lot of them, but we're the building department, so we're gonna say that this construction/building use isn't legal, and make you pay hundreds of thousands of dollars."

or "we could make this minor exception for you that doesn't really affect life safety for the tenants, but we don't want to, so you need to do this, this, this and that, and that will probably cost you a few hundred thousand dollars and take 2 years"

Again, this isn't about "filling out forms" -- this is about obstructionist tactics, selective enforcement, and a lack of political will to prevent this stuff from happening or at least impose stronger checks and balances on the government agencies that oversee building and housing.

well, okay, on that part i'm agreed - if you're going to implement a policy, implement it for real, don't undermine it completely.

There are other issues in terms of affordable housing and housing in general that are related to somewhat outdated norms for what constitutes a family, personal lifestyles, types of employment, but that's some seriously off-topic nerdy shit

Anyway my long-standing housing policy goal is for the city to seize all single-family homes, bulldoze them, and build free public housing.

^ this is outrageous nonsense

single-family homes between Boren and the lake should be converted to city-run boarding houses, and all families relocated to towers next to the Northgate light rail station

deal; now where do we put the dome

lid I-5 all the way from the convention center to Georgetown, cover it in "tiny houses" for the homeless, bike paths and community gardens.

(exhaust fans to vent in @mayorjenny's backyard.)

http://www.latimes.com/opinion/livable-city/la-oe-rosenthal-rent-control-20181019-story.html?fbclid=IwAR1wVZsarrd-79cikKUv_N3KFAVlUwNnZHkC2aHLTTlh7DoQCQ6ewjH5fPI

on the subject of affordable housing:

https://wamu.org/story/18/10/24/isnt-affordable-housing-d-c-area/?fbclid=IwAR00u-sFeKR7iBQ4XhSfQ1EBBNVsf1ZlSXsbf5-aHYTGvI0YeysfcW6w_r4

So yeah I'm pretty comfortable calling developers greedy and basically they are vermin that should be exterminated

Scum of the earth.

The objections to building codes raised so far all seem to fall under what I would call the "boundary conditions problem". Developers are profit-driven, while building codes are driven by considerations that directly oppose maximizing profits, such as requiring electrical inspections underwritten by permitting fees. Because of these opposing motives, developers will predictably and universally operate as close to the boundary of the regulations as possible, and will regularly try to cross the boundaries in the direction that favors profits.

This endless tug-of-war between developers and the enforcers of building codes and zoning requirements results in the developers constantly seeking definitional loopholes in regulatory language, or political leverage to weaken regulations or capture the regulators by placing their allies in charge, and a mindset among embattled enforcers that views every application with extreme suspicion. It doesn't help the disposition of the enforcers that the developers' view of the system is the only one that is consistently publicized, until some new building-safety disaster happens and there is a political scramble to re-regulate.

This same dynamic happens at every point where profiteers are conflict with government regulation. So, yes, developers can and will always play these games, so long as they are rewarded for them by increased profits. The stereotype of the arrogant, lazy bureaucrat exercising a petty and irrational tyranny over the honest and upright businessman, by entangling him in pointless red tape is more fiction than truth, but you can be sure that whenever it does occur, the developers will squeeze every bit of leverage they can from it.

I don't have the economics chops to fully express this concept, but I think that classical "supply and demand" economics have failed to play out in urban real estate the way they "should" according to the textbook because we don't have a sufficient understanding of what the *thing* is for which there is supply and demand, and how that thing is actually changed, and therefore the demand for *it* is changed, when more of it is produced in certain ways.

In other words, sure, if you take some working class neighborhood with standard workforce housing and then just build more identical workforce housing, assuming no growth in population or slower growth than growth in housing, yes, classical economics tells us that supply rising more than demand should lower prices. But when you build massive mixed use luxury projects in that working class neighborhood that have the potential to completely change the neighborhood, you are also changing the demand side, because changing the dynamics of the neighborhood is also going to impact demand in that neighborhood for the working class housing and the land under it (or undeveloped land there). Maybe there are economists who have models to account for all this, but the YIMBYs don't seem that sophisticated about it.

So by the same token, maybe lifting rent control restrictions on some housing stock should cause rents to sort of reach equilibrium, but what in fact happens is that the now decontrolled buildings attract a different class of investor who expects a different return and is going to go in and renovate some kitchens and redo the building face and market it to NYU students with well-off parents instead of the retail workers and teachers' assistants who live there.

another problem is getting apples-to-apples comparisons between existing and new housing. even if you made exact copies of the older housing, down to the finishes and floorplans, you'd be charging more for it because it hasn't depreciated, and constructing it certainly cost more in labor and materials than it did 50 or 100 years ago. but in practice of course there's not a strong incentive to duplicate existing housing, if your profit is X for that but 2X or 3X for building the luxury units. or the dominant tendency around here: building pseudo-luxury units cheaply as hell, knowing that the intended rental market of yupsters will move in even if everything's leaky and there are no true right angles. so long as it has a W/D in unit or some other perk, and looks vaguely bright and 'contemporary' you can get thousands of dollars a month out of these people. and if they discover the place is falling apart they'll move out and you can rent it to another yupster. so you may be increasing the supply of "housing" but maybe not the housing that we need.

the demand for raw units of whatever kind is so massive that landlords and developers both can get away with murder - that's what makes it a housing crisis, and affordability and exploitation are hand-in-hand manifestations of this. i toured a unit this spring in a POS building built probably in the 90s or 00s with no qualities whatsoever. it was just barely in me and my friend's price range. advertised as three bedrooms, but only one of those rooms had an actual window to the outside. when we left the broker person was like "so, maybe we can find some other apartments for you since you didn't like the bedrooms" and i said "you mean, since the bedrooms in this building are illegal." she just kind of laughed and shrugged awkwardly as if this was some quirky personal preference of mine. someone else will take the unit. someone's kid may someday die in a fire in that unit. the landlords do not care and they must be stopped by any means necessary.

even if you made exact copies of the older housing, down to the finishes and floorplans

you actually couldn't do this and have it be up to code because the codes have changed significantly. The older housing is still legal, however, any new housing has to be built up to stricter codes.

The stereotype of the arrogant, lazy bureaucrat exercising a petty and irrational tyranny over people the honest and upright businessman, by entangling him in pointless red tape is more fiction than truth

I have personally experienced the truth of this, as have many of my friends and colleagues.

tbh if I got into the bureaucracy business it would at least partly be to enjoy being a petty tyrant

being a petty tyrant and the benefits package is pretty much the appeal of those jobs fwiw

Not everyone I've dealt with (or have heard others' stories about) in code compliance/enforcement are petty tyrants. There are some that actually care and are competent, but then there are those that totally live up to the stereotype and then some

I don't think red tape is ultimately a big or even modest factor when it comes to why bay area housing is insane, but I find it weird that people find a kneejerk need to defend it. I mean, this is ilx, everyone here is a good liberal, we all believe in some sort of regulatory state and fire codes, that doesn't mean you have to defend every aspect of east bay bureaucracy or every zoning regulation currently on the books. the american zoning system may have progressive roots but that doesn't mean that every implementation has progressive goals or outcomes. a lot of things that are just taken as a given in this country - 'you shouldn't be able to turn your single-family house into a small apartment building or store' are not inherently progressive. our system is not the only way to make sure we don't die in building fires: http://urbankchoze.blogspot.com/2014/04/japanese-zoning.html.

the driving force behind bay area housing prices is 'there isn't enough of it' and the biggest hurdle is the fact that the vast majority of the bay area is reserved for single family housing. moderate zoning upgrades and well-meaning affordable housing projects aren't going to ever put a dent in the market.

In other words, sure, if you take some working class neighborhood with standard workforce housing and then just build more identical workforce housing, assuming no growth in population or slower growth than growth in housing, yes, classical economics tells us that supply rising more than demand should lower prices. But when you build massive mixed use luxury projects in that working class neighborhood that have the potential to completely change the neighborhood, you are also changing the demand side, because changing the dynamics of the neighborhood is also going to impact demand in that neighborhood for the working class housing and the land under it (or undeveloped land there). Maybe there are economists who have models to account for all this, but the YIMBYs don't seem that sophisticated about it.

induced demand exists, but it's not infinite. seattle is a good example of a hot market successfully getting saturated. regardless, no economist's model is gonna be able to reliably predict whether downtown wherever is going to get hip and rich.

Downtown everywhere is either going to get rich and hip or permanently empty in the next twenty or thirty years, you can probably draw a line somewhere in the list of US cities by population or pop density and the cities above the line will intensify and those below the line will collapse.

Downtown Vail, CO will probably prove to be an exception to the population size/density rule, but not the rich and hip rule.

i know i seem like a knee-jerk liberal itt and i do recognize that bureaucracy has problems and can ossify into something really counterproductive etc. dealing with the city can suck! i associate with a lot of people who are working in architecture at some level or other, and i hear about how dealing with the city can suck. a partner of mine is in city government and really really believes in city government as a force for good and even she has days where she's exhausted by how much dealing with the city can suck.

i only became a paperwork defender here because the thread's about rent control, rent control was criticized as not being the be-all-end-all, i suggested it would have to be part of a comprehensive housing policy including A, B, C, D, E, and F, and most of the discussion since has been about all the red tape associated with D with a bit on F. happy to just drop it but if the bureaucracy-haters have some other opinion on rent control, or some alternative solutions to the housing crisis that'd probably be more on-topic than me gradually morphing into a crusader for paperwork and apparatchiks.

lol if you hate the city wait until you try an HOA

I’d have to O an H for that

sure, just saying that government doesn’t have a monopoly on petty tyrants

so this morning my apt complex decided to do near-deafening roofwork at goddamn SEVEN IN THE MORNING. it sounds like elephants walking on the roof.

they told us it'd be this week, but most of us figured, y'know, normal waking hours.

Paris had rent controls for all housing from 2015 but a court ended it earlier this year; shockingly rents have gone up & with municipal elections next spring there's a move to reintroduce it.

By contrast public housing (HLM) is rent-controlled and I live in such a unit. It's obviously classic to pay only 25% of my net income each month on rent & utilities and actually live in the city where I work; the limit in public housing is 30% of your net income.

Last month a new service was introduced whereby you can try to trade your HLM with another person in an HLM in the city, for when your family grows or shrinks, for instance. Once the kids leave we'll look into that.

lol if you hate the city wait until you try an HOA

― the late great, Wednesday, October 24, 2018 7:26 PM (yesterday)

i have heard those horror stories -- everytime I think, oh, that condo isn't that expensive and it's in my neighborhood even, maybe I'll look into buying, I think of all my friends that have shitty HOAs.

happy to just drop it but if the bureaucracy-haters have some other opinion on rent control, or some alternative solutions to the housing crisis that'd probably be more on-topic than me gradually morphing into a crusader for paperwork and apparatchiks.

Uh, I've been pretty solidly defending rent control here AND criticizing the mechanics on the government level that prevent things from being built. I'm just trying to say that the system is fucked from the top almost all the way down. At this point, I feel like the only thing that's going to realistically solve the housing crisis in affluent urban centers is a natural disaster or something else that leads to massive depopulation of those areas

sorry if i've been misreading you, then. i still would like to hope for solutions beyond disasters or something else. there ARE efforts building to restart the conversation around housing but they're in sort of academic/policy circles i think and it'll be a while before those trickle back into the political vocabulary like universal healthcare has. in a way i think government intervention in the housing market (except to subsidize suburban home ownership and other higher-end-of-the-market products) has been more completely banished from discussion than almost any other previously mainstream topic.

where I live it's a bit more active a conversation than just in academy/policy circles -- so the frustration and obstacles are clearer, but we have the national housing crisis + a disaster resulting in mass deaths pushing action forward (at least in theory).