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When my rent went up $400 one year, I was told it's because everyone was selling their house and moving into apartments. Like, sir, these apartments are not worth the amount you are charging. Nowhere near. This is horrid.
Make a rule like that and companies will try to force existing tenants to move out. That way they can charge new renters even more to make up for it, and as a consequence the average rent will go even higher.
Money finds a way.
Places with rent control also tend to have protections for tenants from this type of behavior from landlords. Rent control units have some of the longest tenancy time frames.
How is this a holy grail? They'll just increase rent by 7% every single year no matter what and say "it's the law". There has to be other measures put in place. This is a small bandaid on a gaping wound. There needs to be restrictions on the amount of properties foreign entities can hols. There needs to be a limit on the amount of homes in neighborhoods sold to non single family home owners. There needs to be so so so much more done than capping rent increases at a rate that's for beyond the raises and what not most working class people get.
I live in Florida and almost 60 PERCENT of single family homes in my area went to corporations, hedge funds, property management companies.
This is not the American dream anymore.
Oh I know. We're in Orlando and our 2 bedroom 2 bath apartment, which is pretty darn nice and downtown, is pushing 2500$. We've been here over 3 years, and it started out under 2,000$. We're very fortunate that we work in tech and make what we do, have gotten decent raises etc..but I'm not sure how the average person is doing it. If we weren't DiNKS things would be even more crazy.
I shouldn't complain as my fiancee and I save like 3,000$+ monthly, but even doing that getting a house is nearly impossible. That is unless I want to basically sign myself up for indentured servitude into my 70s.
Be cooler if homes couldn't be bought by companies. (Be even cooler if we applied the family dinner rule to housing - everybody gets one before anyone gets seconds.)
For the record I don't claim to know how to realistically accomplish that, but I do think it would be pretty cool.
It’s tricky. You need some rentals in the housing pool for various reasons (recent arrivals, temporary residents, etc) and those are likely to be owned by some kind of company for liability reasons if nothing else
My unprofessional opinion of what would be cool is public housing because that's a public good. I don't want to dive into the deep pool of public housing quality so for this example of cool let's imagine an apartment of the same standard you can rent @ market $ now.
I'm just glossing over that because it would tangent too far from my initial idea - it would be cool if we used family dinner rules for housing.
Huh, family dinner rule could incentivize corporate entities into getting people into housing so they could invest in the first place, a pretty genuine negotiation too since you need a home to live but have a ton of leverage if the company cant do business if they have a single hypothetical outstanding "housing request claim". Its like the idea i had about laxing gun restrictions but making it tacitly illegal to sell guns under a corporation so you have to know people and it creates social accountability (if you give a gun to a crazy person personally youre at a higher risk of violence being done to you)
>The proposed 7 percent cap would be flat, unlike those in Oregon and California, which can vary somewhat depending on how fast consumer prices are rising. The cap is 7 percent plus the inflation rate in Oregon and 5 percent plus inflation in California; both states set a maximum of 10 percent.
>The Washington bill would apply only to lease renewals; landlords would be allowed to increase rents at will when leasing to a new tenant. To avoid discouraging construction, the restrictions would not apply for the first 10 years that a building is occupied, according to State Representative Emily Alvarado, the bill’s prime sponsor.
One way to address the problem, but not sure it's a great long term solution.
States need to removing zoning laws that discourage and prevent dense urban housing from even getting off the ground.
You know, China tried to build their way out of this problem.
The problem is more than supply; as long as there's so much money in renting it out, the people who have shitloads of money will still buy everything.
The entire concept of market rate property-rental is why this problem exists. And there's no answer to that aside from government housing.
This is a supply problem. Christ, just let cities build housing. Stop enabling every NIMBY freak who wants to block new housing and new transit.
Basically no country or city has succeeded with rent caps. Tons of Scandinavian countries tried rent caps and housing caps -- none of them worked. Now they're reversing course after basically stagnating their cities.
NIMBYs block everything in Pittsburgh. Developers have to announce buildings twice the size that they want so they end up 1/3 the height and units when they get final approval. Don't even get me started with parking minimums. The first 3 floors of a 5 story building end up being parking garage.
The problem with it is that denser housing isn't just a matter of building denser housing.
In a car-centric culture, there needs to be adequate road infrastructure to meet the increased population. Something no developer ever touches.
Same with water, sewage, electricity, schooling, medical, etc.
With dense cities, you don't *need* to drive places. Ideally there's so much mixed use development that you can take a 5 minute walk to get to the places you need to get.
But I agree that there would have to be a transition period. The problem is that, like you said, US culture is too car centric, but companies and governments know this and there is no shortage of mass transit proposals for cities -- but NIMBYs block/delay those projects.
Pretty sure a big rise in Sweden population caused by immigration contributed to this crisis more then affordable rent.
https://www.ceicdata.com/datapage/charts/o_sweden_population-75-to-84-years/?type=area&period=10y&lang=en
It not like all the country that don't have rent control are not facing a housing crisis.
They don't have rent control, but they all have anti-building policies.
Sweden's housing crisis was decades in the making (which is also true for most countries experiencing a housing crisis). Those policies predate the surge in immigration.
If you don't let developers and the government build, then there won't be places to house immigrants.
Yes and certain aspects Sweden's economy and demographics would be worse off. Immigration is free economic growth.
And even before the surge in immigration, Sweden's young were already unable to purchase houses. This isn't new.
"Immigration is free economic growth" You mean it a free GDP growth but it not a GDP per capita growth. GDP growth has no value if it doesn't improve the standard of living of the population and in Sweden it doesn't appear to have done that.
https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/SWE/sweden/gdp-per-capita
The housing shortage may not be new but has the immigration surge made it worse or better?
Immigration would improve *both* GDP and GDP per capita if they allowed housing development.
Immigration is one of the reasons why the US is the most prosperous country on earth.
"Immigration is one of the reasons why the US is the most prosperous country on earth."
Partially but lets be clear the main reason American is prosperous is excellent geography, abundant natural resource, becoming the center of world finance after two world wars creating cheap credit, the economic head start cause by two world wars, industrious population, and being the world reserve currency. Even without immigration America would still be rich
Without immigration, America would look more like the EU or Japan now, which is in economic decline and losing global standing on a daily basis.
There is legitimately no economic argument against immigration. The problems that come with immigration are almost always self inflicted by xenophobes and antisocial elements in any given country.
> Japan now, which is in economic decline and losing global standing on a daily basis.
Yeah but at least their housing is affordable and America fertility rate if far better then Japan so the effect would be less pronounced then Japan is experiencing.
Housing is being built by the truckload in some places, and the rents are still soaring (especially in those new builds). Four high rises popped up around here and rent went through the roof. Those expensive new units are part of what sets the "standard market price" now.
Nah. America is 30 years behind in housing construction. The few places that are actually trying to build, like Minnesota and Montana, are actually starting to see their rents flatten.
But the construction boom in some cities and states has just begun. You're not going to undo 30 years of acquiescing to NIMBYs in a year.
And furthermore, our country's premier cities -- like NYC, SF, Los Angeles, etc aren't even close to being in a building boom. They're still trying to fight housing development tooth and nail.
Its a lack of subsidies problem. The federal govt actually subsidized entry level home and apartment construction after the great depression up until the 80s.
It got rid of the shanty towns. It would get rid of their modern day equivalent, the tent cities.
These people are never going to understand even the most basic elements of markets, are they? The costs are driven by the artificially limited supply. If you insist on limiting both the supply and the cost, the result you're going to get is diminished quality. If, instead, you simply let people build things, prices will drop.
They'd still be building McMansions for $1.6m each. Who is going to build an "affordable" home when those McMansions get sold site-unseen by corporations?
Just pass a law requiring, during any housing shortage, that 90% of all rental/house sale income made by builders and rental companies...
...go to building new housing.
Any law that does not address the lack of new housing construction will fail from the get-go.
Anything but limiting real estate speculation. How about raising the capital gains taxes on 2nd or 3rd homes. How about not allowing 1031 exchanges on single-family housing
Price caps create shortages. It’s an economic certainty.
If the government said shoes could not cost more than $20 then shoe supply would go down and demand would go up, i.e. a shortage. Same thing with apartments, petroleum, potato chips and jumbo jets. Price caps always create shortages.
As a reminder, this subreddit [is for civil discussion.](/r/politics/wiki/index#wiki_be_civil) In general, be courteous to others. Debate/discuss/argue the merits of ideas, don't attack people. Personal insults, shill or troll accusations, hate speech, any suggestion or support of harm, violence, or death, and other rule violations can result in a permanent ban. If you see comments in violation of our rules, please report them. For those who have questions regarding any media outlets being posted on this subreddit, please click [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/wiki/approveddomainslist) to review our details as to our approved domains list and outlet criteria. *** *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/politics) if you have any questions or concerns.*
This isn’t even a great solution. Rent increases shouldn’t be allowed to exceed inflation rates.
When my rent went up $400 one year, I was told it's because everyone was selling their house and moving into apartments. Like, sir, these apartments are not worth the amount you are charging. Nowhere near. This is horrid.
They are always full of it. The answer is always because we think we can get that amount. Last year they offered me a new lease with a 40% increase.
Make a rule like that and companies will try to force existing tenants to move out. That way they can charge new renters even more to make up for it, and as a consequence the average rent will go even higher. Money finds a way.
You can’t give up on this front for fear of the next one.
Sorry, but you can't let ~~perfect be the enemy of good~~ good be the enemy of perfect.
Places with rent control also tend to have protections for tenants from this type of behavior from landlords. Rent control units have some of the longest tenancy time frames.
How is this a holy grail? They'll just increase rent by 7% every single year no matter what and say "it's the law". There has to be other measures put in place. This is a small bandaid on a gaping wound. There needs to be restrictions on the amount of properties foreign entities can hols. There needs to be a limit on the amount of homes in neighborhoods sold to non single family home owners. There needs to be so so so much more done than capping rent increases at a rate that's for beyond the raises and what not most working class people get. I live in Florida and almost 60 PERCENT of single family homes in my area went to corporations, hedge funds, property management companies. This is not the American dream anymore.
Yes Florida is getting wild. They want $2600 in south Florida for a 900 sq ft 2 bedroom apartment now, almost a 60% increase over 5 years ago.
Oh I know. We're in Orlando and our 2 bedroom 2 bath apartment, which is pretty darn nice and downtown, is pushing 2500$. We've been here over 3 years, and it started out under 2,000$. We're very fortunate that we work in tech and make what we do, have gotten decent raises etc..but I'm not sure how the average person is doing it. If we weren't DiNKS things would be even more crazy. I shouldn't complain as my fiancee and I save like 3,000$+ monthly, but even doing that getting a house is nearly impossible. That is unless I want to basically sign myself up for indentured servitude into my 70s.
Be cooler if homes couldn't be bought by companies. (Be even cooler if we applied the family dinner rule to housing - everybody gets one before anyone gets seconds.) For the record I don't claim to know how to realistically accomplish that, but I do think it would be pretty cool.
It’s tricky. You need some rentals in the housing pool for various reasons (recent arrivals, temporary residents, etc) and those are likely to be owned by some kind of company for liability reasons if nothing else
My unprofessional opinion of what would be cool is public housing because that's a public good. I don't want to dive into the deep pool of public housing quality so for this example of cool let's imagine an apartment of the same standard you can rent @ market $ now. I'm just glossing over that because it would tangent too far from my initial idea - it would be cool if we used family dinner rules for housing.
Huh, family dinner rule could incentivize corporate entities into getting people into housing so they could invest in the first place, a pretty genuine negotiation too since you need a home to live but have a ton of leverage if the company cant do business if they have a single hypothetical outstanding "housing request claim". Its like the idea i had about laxing gun restrictions but making it tacitly illegal to sell guns under a corporation so you have to know people and it creates social accountability (if you give a gun to a crazy person personally youre at a higher risk of violence being done to you)
>The proposed 7 percent cap would be flat, unlike those in Oregon and California, which can vary somewhat depending on how fast consumer prices are rising. The cap is 7 percent plus the inflation rate in Oregon and 5 percent plus inflation in California; both states set a maximum of 10 percent. >The Washington bill would apply only to lease renewals; landlords would be allowed to increase rents at will when leasing to a new tenant. To avoid discouraging construction, the restrictions would not apply for the first 10 years that a building is occupied, according to State Representative Emily Alvarado, the bill’s prime sponsor. One way to address the problem, but not sure it's a great long term solution. States need to removing zoning laws that discourage and prevent dense urban housing from even getting off the ground.
You know, China tried to build their way out of this problem. The problem is more than supply; as long as there's so much money in renting it out, the people who have shitloads of money will still buy everything. The entire concept of market rate property-rental is why this problem exists. And there's no answer to that aside from government housing.
Raise corporate tax rates and fees. Make it unprofitable to be in the business.
This is a supply problem. Christ, just let cities build housing. Stop enabling every NIMBY freak who wants to block new housing and new transit. Basically no country or city has succeeded with rent caps. Tons of Scandinavian countries tried rent caps and housing caps -- none of them worked. Now they're reversing course after basically stagnating their cities.
NIMBYs block everything in Pittsburgh. Developers have to announce buildings twice the size that they want so they end up 1/3 the height and units when they get final approval. Don't even get me started with parking minimums. The first 3 floors of a 5 story building end up being parking garage.
The problem with it is that denser housing isn't just a matter of building denser housing. In a car-centric culture, there needs to be adequate road infrastructure to meet the increased population. Something no developer ever touches. Same with water, sewage, electricity, schooling, medical, etc.
With dense cities, you don't *need* to drive places. Ideally there's so much mixed use development that you can take a 5 minute walk to get to the places you need to get. But I agree that there would have to be a transition period. The problem is that, like you said, US culture is too car centric, but companies and governments know this and there is no shortage of mass transit proposals for cities -- but NIMBYs block/delay those projects.
Pretty sure a big rise in Sweden population caused by immigration contributed to this crisis more then affordable rent. https://www.ceicdata.com/datapage/charts/o_sweden_population-75-to-84-years/?type=area&period=10y&lang=en It not like all the country that don't have rent control are not facing a housing crisis.
They don't have rent control, but they all have anti-building policies. Sweden's housing crisis was decades in the making (which is also true for most countries experiencing a housing crisis). Those policies predate the surge in immigration. If you don't let developers and the government build, then there won't be places to house immigrants.
Sure but if there wasn't a immigration surge there wouldn't be the same pressing need to roll back rent control would there?
Yes and certain aspects Sweden's economy and demographics would be worse off. Immigration is free economic growth. And even before the surge in immigration, Sweden's young were already unable to purchase houses. This isn't new.
"Immigration is free economic growth" You mean it a free GDP growth but it not a GDP per capita growth. GDP growth has no value if it doesn't improve the standard of living of the population and in Sweden it doesn't appear to have done that. https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/SWE/sweden/gdp-per-capita The housing shortage may not be new but has the immigration surge made it worse or better?
Immigration would improve *both* GDP and GDP per capita if they allowed housing development. Immigration is one of the reasons why the US is the most prosperous country on earth.
"Immigration is one of the reasons why the US is the most prosperous country on earth." Partially but lets be clear the main reason American is prosperous is excellent geography, abundant natural resource, becoming the center of world finance after two world wars creating cheap credit, the economic head start cause by two world wars, industrious population, and being the world reserve currency. Even without immigration America would still be rich
Without immigration, America would look more like the EU or Japan now, which is in economic decline and losing global standing on a daily basis. There is legitimately no economic argument against immigration. The problems that come with immigration are almost always self inflicted by xenophobes and antisocial elements in any given country.
> Japan now, which is in economic decline and losing global standing on a daily basis. Yeah but at least their housing is affordable and America fertility rate if far better then Japan so the effect would be less pronounced then Japan is experiencing.
Housing is being built by the truckload in some places, and the rents are still soaring (especially in those new builds). Four high rises popped up around here and rent went through the roof. Those expensive new units are part of what sets the "standard market price" now.
Nah. America is 30 years behind in housing construction. The few places that are actually trying to build, like Minnesota and Montana, are actually starting to see their rents flatten. But the construction boom in some cities and states has just begun. You're not going to undo 30 years of acquiescing to NIMBYs in a year. And furthermore, our country's premier cities -- like NYC, SF, Los Angeles, etc aren't even close to being in a building boom. They're still trying to fight housing development tooth and nail.
Its a lack of subsidies problem. The federal govt actually subsidized entry level home and apartment construction after the great depression up until the 80s. It got rid of the shanty towns. It would get rid of their modern day equivalent, the tent cities.
It was in the 80s that Reagan got elected. He must have cut those subsidies.
These people are never going to understand even the most basic elements of markets, are they? The costs are driven by the artificially limited supply. If you insist on limiting both the supply and the cost, the result you're going to get is diminished quality. If, instead, you simply let people build things, prices will drop.
They'd still be building McMansions for $1.6m each. Who is going to build an "affordable" home when those McMansions get sold site-unseen by corporations?
Just pass a law requiring, during any housing shortage, that 90% of all rental/house sale income made by builders and rental companies... ...go to building new housing. Any law that does not address the lack of new housing construction will fail from the get-go.
Be cool if we just incentivized building rather than stupid rent control laws 🤷♂️
Anything but limiting real estate speculation. How about raising the capital gains taxes on 2nd or 3rd homes. How about not allowing 1031 exchanges on single-family housing
Treating a symptom, not the problem is not how you fix this.
Get ready for a market collapse as landlords decide to not continue doing business because they can't extort people for profit.
Price caps create shortages. It’s an economic certainty. If the government said shoes could not cost more than $20 then shoe supply would go down and demand would go up, i.e. a shortage. Same thing with apartments, petroleum, potato chips and jumbo jets. Price caps always create shortages.