Never mind. I was thinking of a Massachusetts case anyway. :smack:
But all of those rent controlled apartments are not necessarily inhabited by an inappropriate group. One woman is just one woman, and aren’t people supposed to benefit from rent control? Isn’t that its purpose? To benefit people who couldn’t otherwise afford housing? I really am trying here, but I can’t see any other outcome except people move out-rents go up-now only rich people can live in the mission. Even if you made all of those apartments available tomorrow they’d be rented by Thursday and how would that be any different? You still need cheap housing for new graduates and hispter indie film makers.
That’s not that small. It’s exactly half the size of my flat, and two of us live here right now, usually three. You must be thinking of amazingly spacious prison cells.
Why do you think it’s no big deal if people have to move from their homes? Do you really think uprooting families with long ties to the area is a good thing, just so that incomers can pay more for their homes? The owner’s increased profit is worth that much?
Are there really landlords deciding that they’d rather not rent their properties at all than rent them for rent-controlled values? That seems odd to me. I mean, maybe they’d make less money than on the free market, but they’d make more money than letting the houses sit empty.
The issue still has nothing to do with rent control. Rent control may well be a very fine topic for debate, but that is not why there is demand for very small studios in San Francisco.
Where single yuppies want to live, it will always be more economical to rent to them. It will always make more sense to rent four apartments to four yuppies than one apartment to a four person family.
Families want things like a kitchen you can cook in every day, a dining room table, a discrete place to get romantic, room to play outside, and space to entertain guests. Young people, on the other hand, need relatively little. In a one-person apartment, there is little need to build in privacy. And young people do much of their eating and entertaining out and about, spending very little time in their living space. What is important to yuppies, however, is location. Because so much of their social life is out and about, they will pay fairly high prices for a good location. The family wants a good kitchen, the young single person wants a good selection of restaurants nearby.
Basically all of San Francisco is primo location for yuppies, and there is an endless supply of yuppies waiting at the toll gate of the Bay Bridge waiting for their chance to get into the city. In San Francisco, it always makes more sense to cater to a good location (which is easy) than to a large size (which is hard thanks to geographic realities.) Catering to families in San Francisco will always, in a free market, lead to lower returns. The presence of a much more reasonable housing market within easy commuting distance is another factor. Very few people actually need to live in San Francisco proper, so those who are willing to pay a premium for location win out once again.
There is also a demographic shift. There was a time when people married soon out of college, and their prosperous years were also family years. But we get married later and in fewer numbers, and we’ve developed a phase where we have no family, few set expenses, and relatively high incomes. This demographic drives up rent in prime locations.
While all this is happening, the traditional housing for young single people has disappeared. It was not long ago that a working girl in the city or young college grad would rent a room at a boarding house. This has a few distinct advantages over today’s group homes and “improvised living spaces.” Boarding house rents were often month to month, reasonably priced meals were often available, you could expect some level of privacy, and you were not economically tied to what may well be un-trustworthy strangers. Being able to cut a check directly to your landlord and be 100% in control of your living situation is a lot better than being tied up in a lease with randos you met on Craig’s List and spending the next fighting and getting screwed when someone skips out on rent.
I’m not sure why there are no longer boarding houses. I did tour one in Washington DC once, but maybe that was an anomoly. But in any case, that is what San Francisco really needs.
It’s not a matter of just of the owner’s increased profit. I’m from NYC , and the people I know who live in rent-controlled or stabilized apartments don’t behave like people who live in market-rent apartments. ( Plenty of them exist in New York, in buildings with fewer than 6 units) People who live in market rate apartments get a bigger apartment when they have kids or move to a smaller one when the kids leave, and the bigger or smaller apartment is often in the same neighborhood. They may buy a house at some point. People I’ve known in rent-controlled or stabilized apartments keep the three bedroom apartment after the kids move out , or try to stay in the one-bedroom for as long as possible with a kid or two. They buy houses - in the country for weekends. Because they don’t move, there’s a low vacancy rate. And that low vacancy rate causes rents to be higher in the market rate apartments than they would have been without rent-control or stabilization. Getting rid of rent control or stabilization now isn’t going to fix this immediately, and it may take more than just market rents to fix the problem.
Either they’re hoping the rent control laws will be changed at some point, and would rather have the apartments vacant just in case the new rules only apply to tenancies begun after a certain date or they’re looking to empty all the apartments and convert them to condos.
Sven: do you think San Francisco is a younger, more single city than DC?
This is exactly the reason for the law in the first place. People were getting displaced by rising rents.
Here’s the thing: there are no rent-controlled values. Vacant units can charge market value. The only restriction is on raising the rent of an existing tenant. It is true (as has been pointed out) that this lowers the “turnover rate” of people moving out. But that’s a feature, not a bug.
You understand this causes rents to go up faster on vacancies than they would on an open market, right? And combined with a large number of rentals being taken off the market just makes it worse?
Also, I see an estimate below that says 31,000 units have been removed from the market. The source is supposedly the census. I haven’t checked yet since I’m on my mobile.
Yeah, like I said, its pretty much inherited.
Rent control is simply indefensible. It is a relic of WWII price control mentality that is no longer applciable or defensible anymore.
I know millionaires that live in Rent control apartments in NYC (or at least maintain it as a pied a terre with a “weekend house” in the country).
Anybody else seeing slums in San Francisco’s future?
So is employer-sponsored health insurance, yet it lives.
As to the OP, if you don’t like the idea of a tiny apartment, don’t live in one. I can only see a problem if the tiny apartments resulted in such a high population density that other public goods like the sewer system became insufficient.
In college I lived in a two-room unit that could not have been more than 300 square feet. With three other people. Granted, we didn’t have to cook or eat there, but we did have a bathroom.
You keep saying “off the market,” as if all those apartments were just locked up, vacant. But people do live there, and they do pay rent. If those units’ rent was allowed to adjust upward to the maximum the owner could get out of them from anyone else, most of the present inhabitants would then be searching for new digs. How does this help the housing supply? How is building more housing less of a solution?
Sure, that’s the downside. But it’s worth it.
Uh, no. You’re making one issue into two. There’s no double-dip problem here.
I’m still not clear on what rent stabilization has to do with apartment size. You’re basically saying “smaller apartments should be prohibited because rent control”. It’s a non sequitur.
Notice, as mentioned in the NYT article linked in the OP, that SF’s rent control ordinance doesn’t apply to all units. Rather, it applies only to those built before 1979. (I’ve lived here for twenty years, btw.) The new units, then, if approved and built, would be free market ones. Whatever one’s view of rent control, I have a hard time seeing how this proposal makes things worse.
There’s a couple other points I want to respond to later today, but for the moment:
Somewhere north of 70% of all rental units in San Francisco are rent controlled. Adding small numbers of non-rent controlled units does not result in two separate housing markets (where one is outrageously distorted to the determent of people seeking housing, landlords and many others, and the other market is nice and efficient), it results in the extension of the screwed up market to all housing stock. Adding small numbers of rent controlled apartments perpetuates the problem, and can actually aggravate other problems, too. (More on that later.)
Well, the housing market in San Francisco is on the short list of the most screwed up in the nation. I’d be embarrassed to call that success. Housing is unaffordable, and one of the articles I linked to called the market in SF much worse than even that in Manhattan.
No, shortages mean rising prices and restricted supply. Again, this is covered in first year economics. Would you like cites showing that rent control reduces supply and raises prices?
I’m happy to restate what I wrote a few times on the first page: when we know that a policy is a failure, trying to apply band-aids to the failure is wrong. Fix the underlying problem.
Microaparatments are being touted as a way to relieve the affordable housing shortages. This is not only wrong, but the current debate in San Francisco is a red herring: rather than examining the fundamental issue of rent control being a discredited and harmful economic policy, the discussion is on whether the micro-apartments are nicely designed or not, and who would want to live there. Which, incidentally, is a good percentage of the discussion here.
Micro-apartments are a gimmick, not a solution. Just like conservatives are touting cheap health plans that cover almost nothing as the solution to the health care problem in this country. Gimmicks aren’t going to solve housing problems or health care problems: address the real issue, don’t propose cute ideas and claim they will do anything but extend the misery for most people who are being affected by these problems.
Indeed. What large city with a non-prostrate economy manages to have affordable housing without bulldozing huge areas for development every year?
There is no rent control in London, and yet housing is incredibly expensive. The path to wealth for anyone with a wad of spare cash is to buy a nice big two-bedroom apartment, break it up into two tiny ones, and trouser a fat profit. Or even better, rent it out.
A colleague of mine has a five-bedroom house and is mulling over the exciting phenomenon of Multiple Occupier Housing - basically turning it into a dormitory with 6-7 lockable rooms and a couple of tiny shared bathrooms & kitchens. Apparently this is the profitable thing to rent out to recent graduates and other 'aspiring professionals at the moment - a bedsit by any other name.
Any very large city with hordes of people who want to move there for work/lifestyle reasons is going to be horrendous for housing affordability, unless you basically zone the entire place for forty-story apartment buildings. Things like rent controls and whatnot don’t help, but they are not the root cause of the problem. EVERY real estate market has it’s various inefficiencies, pretty much by definition.
200sq feet is about 20.5sq metres. That’s small, but not impossibly so - IKEA have a standard demo of a complete family apartment in 35sq metres, and I think they do a 25sm metre one as well. It’s not exactly a prison cell, for sure.
Ravenman, mostly I posted to point out an importance nuance (new units aren’t rent controlled in SF) which seems to have been overlooked in the thread.
FWIW, I’m no fan of rent control. Which in this context, as others have noted, is actually rent stabilization, since rents on vacant units aren’t regulated. BTW, another important nuance overlooked in the thread is that rent control here is more than a restriction on rent increases. It’s also a restriction (with narrow exceptions) on taking rental units off the market and protections (widely regarded by landlords as unfair) which make it very difficult to evict tenants for grounds other than nonpayment of rent. Given the realities of politics in SF, rent control isn’t going away any time in the foreseeable future. I’ve read (sorry, no cite handy) that something like 70% of SF’s voters are renters. Repeal ain’t gonna happen. Vested interests and all that.
Meanwhile, I have long felt the fundamental problem we have is that it’s so difficult to get anything built here. That, IMHO, is the real supply problem, as evidenced by your statistic that less then 30% of the current rental units were built since 1979. What I’d love to see is a development track for modest, no-frills apartments (regular studios, one and two bedrooms) which are inherently priced (based on amenities and location) for the middle of the market, which is terribly underserved. (Again, these would be outside rent control.) Why this isn’t happening is a complex subject, but a large part of it is that each proposed project draws objections from neighbors, who fear worsening parking shortages, more pressure on already over-taxed mass transit, etc. Moreover, the city has a longstanding policy of shaking down developers for fees, set-asides for low income units and neighborhood amenities which make all but the high-end projects economically unfeasible. I’m not optimistic we’ll ever adopt the no-frills policy, but at least it’s in the realm of the possible, whereas repealing rent control on the old housing stock is not.
You suggest this would be a waste of time, because distortions of the controlled market screw up the uncontrolled one. Frankly, I don’t understand the basis for this claim. (And, yeah, I took Econ 101; in fact, political economics was my second minor.) The uncontrolled market in SF is already pretty big, albeit today mostly focused on the high end. Expanding the uncontrolled market and extending it into the middle would be good things. YMMV, but I’d rather have half a loaf than none. IMHO, that we’re considering micro-studios is a step in the right direction.
And it has been for decades. Since before rent stabilization was enacted.
And it has been for decades. Since before rent stabilization was enacted.
Arguable, but some would say it has been for decades. Since before rent stabilization was enacted.
Reducing supply is what raises prices. You keep phrasing it as rent control raises prices (by some unstated means) and reduces supply (which further raises prices). This is not true, or at the very least you need to elaborate.
That’s a lovely sentiment, but it does not answer my question. Why do you believe it’s good policy in the first place to mandate apartment size the way it currently is in SF?
Would you like cites showing that increasing supply lowers prices?
Rent control is not ‘the fundamental issue’. Not every policy related to tenancy/apartments comes down to rent control. You are the one with the red herring: You’re bringing rent control into it, when that’s not the subject.
As someone who happily lives in a <300 sq ft studio apartment, I strongly take exception to the statement that my home is some kind of gimmick.
I don’t believe I ever claimed that they’re a solution, or would cure what ails the SF housing market. But saying that they’re “not a solution” is not a good argument for prohibiting them. Bubblegum isn’t a solution, shall we prohibit that as well?
Extend the misery? :rolleyes:
There seems to be a bit of mixing of different problems and solutions going on, some of which are less than logically consistent to me.
Regulation of apartment size effects development, whereas rent control effects the distribution of existing apartments. You can’t claim one is an argument against the other, they do different things.
Rent control is a clumsy instrument and tends to distort the market in unwanted ways, so I agree it should either be reformed or removed.
However it is quite logically inconsistent to claim to be pro-freemarket and want to restrict the production of a commodity on such arbitrary (and faulty) grounds. Some people want or need to live in smaller apartments, and there are extreme benefits to it. It would actually make more sense to restrict how BIG apartments can be (though I don’t advocate that). Space within existing infrastructure is a limited commodity.
Housing is SUPPOSED to be temporary solutions to generational problems, since housing needs change for people over time. If larger apartments are in short supply (which they generally aren’t) nothing prohibits them from being built. Here we have a situations where small apartments are in short supply because of bad regulation. Supporting that because large apartments could become scarce makes no sense.
I’m sorry but this is a silly argument. If you want to increase material consumption then allowing smaller apartments is obviously beneficial to that as well, since having lower living expenses leaves more money for other consumption. Storage space is also cheaper than living space, if you want to live small but for some reason collect a bunch of stuff. I would guess that in general, people are more limited in their consumption by lack of money than lack of space.
Even if ONLY small apartments were built in SF (which will never happen), at a rate of 2% growth of the housing market it would take 35 years for them to make up HALF of the then existing housing market. So in a super-extreme unrealistic scenario, this COULD gradually BECOME a problem over a VERY long time. And of course you would even in this scenario be quite aware of it and be able to change course or adjust if you felt it was needed.
Over time our consumption of living space has grown immensly, and the US is way ahead the rest of the world in this area. This is one cause of many strategic problems. It hinders economic development because it creates inefficiency (more resources spent on transportation, rather than more productive use). It increases pollution (for the same reason), it lowers quality of life and causes segregation. In short, it is bad both on a micro and macro scale, both for the economy, the enviroment and people.
In reality the regulation of the housing markets tend to be incredibly counter-productive, both for individuals, businesses and society as a whole. This is a market where many incentives and regulations tend to be incredibly destructive, and only the inherent strengths of urban enviroments make it possible to sustain them.
Successful urban enviroments depend primarily on two factors*: Density and diversity, the denser and more diverse the better. This is what creates economic growth and efficiency. There is probably a cut-off point as fars as density goes, but so far we haven’t been able to reach it. The densest areas in the world still show only benefits.
Unfortunately most regulation restricts both, some intentionally and some unintentionally.
- Another very important factor is education levels but that is only indirectly (if strongly) effected by the physical structures, and more directly bu other policy decisions.
Just to put this in a political perspective…
I am quite obviously in the “micro-apartment camp” or whatever you want to call it. I am also just about the least conservative person on this board, and I also happen to be a politician. Greens and progressives should be (and are usually) supporting policy decisions that enable this sort of living enviroments for two obvious reasons:
- It is good for the enviroment
- It is good for people with low income
From a conservative ideological viewpoint you can support it since it is a deregulation and good for business if for no other reason (although many conservatives care about the other two reasons as well).
This is a political subject where reaching a multi-partisan agreement is fundamentally easy. I had no problems getting support from all parties. It depends more on (and this will sound patronizing for which I apologise) whether people are knowledgable on the issue.
This is not by any definition a “conservative” policy.